


Reconnaissance Missions

by LittleDesertFlower



Series: Reconnaissance Missions [1]
Category: Memorias de Idhún | The Idhún's Memories - Laura Gallego
Genre: Canon Compliant, La Resistencia, M/M, Original Character(s), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-01-26 16:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12561252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower
Summary: Shail and Alsan are as different as fire and ice, living in a house a million miles away from home, where extremes often clash. Their mission is almost the only thing they have in common, yet they have to agree on grocery lists and fighting strategies. Surviving a world away from home proves hard, especially when the only help they count on is a teenager from Earth who Alsan dislikes, and they have to work against Kirtash’s attempts at keeping them from saving Idhún. At first coexistence is near hellish, then slowly the ice melts and the fire cools down and the common ground begins to hover somewhere in between magic and sheer brute force. If they thought saving their world was easy, they were very wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This might read a little weirder/differently than the rest of the chapters because I wrote it a long long time ago and under the influence of George R. R. Martin’s terrific prose while bingeing A Song of Ice and Fire.  
> In order to get some details right, I used the Idhún Encyclopedia (Enciclopedia de Idhún) for consulting geographical data among other things, and the three novels for plotting accuracy. Any mistakes made, nevertheless, are purely mine.  
> I tried more or less to fill the gaps of the first book’s plot in that I wrote basically only in those gaps and just mentioned the actual events of the book, with the occasional different POV and actual lines from the books

Three Suns. Three Moons. And blood-red sky.

That's what could be seen from the highest windows of Kazlunn Tower, the several-thousands-of-years early Astral Alignment in the shape of a lethal hexagon, and the vast wings of hundreds of dragons everywhere in the world dropping dead from the horizon to the hard ground, and the victory-thirsty sheks, winged snakes, roaming the world they had conquered once more. It was the sound, not of the dying beasts nor the sheks' evil hisses, but of the unicorns tripping over their legs in every patch of green upon Idhún's grounds that unsettled the wizards in each of the three Towers. Idhún's magic depended upon those creatures, and it died a little more when another unicorn closed its eyes forever.

Moved to urgency by a prophecy most had believed faux until the six stars had emerged in the skies, both the Venerable Mother of the Church of the Three Moons and the Venerable Father of the Church of the Three Suns had called for a search to find a dragon and a unicorn alive.

Now that they'd been found, the wizards, congregated in Kazlunn, worked against time to save their lives. The light coming in from the blind-less windows was slowly murdering a golden-scaled dragon and a baby pearl-skinned unicorn, and if one of them succumbed to it, Idhún's fate was set in stone. Only a dragon and a unicorn together can end the reign of the sheks for good.

It was known that naming a baby before their second year was bad luck in case he would contract some illness and never recover, but the young wizard watching over the dragon and the unicorn paid no mind to such nonsense; the moment he'd laid eyes on the baby unicorn, he'd known—she was Lunnaris, Magic Deliverer.

All unicorns are, that's why all wizards are wizards, but she was the last one.

And she was shaking feebly, eyes closed, when the dragon next to her extended a wing coveted in a skeletal membrane and wobbled closer to her until she lay, weak and still, on the blankets.

The young wizard smiled to himself, not daring to interrupt such a sacred moment, and tried to kneel comfortably on the tile as he watched such different beings offer each other a comfort that could either work to save both their lives or make the end more bearable.

He turned his head slightly behind him, where the Masters of the Towers were loudly discussing what to do.

“If we do not act now and in consequence, we might have to end up facing the worst,” said a woman, clad in gold-and-blue robes.

“No one has opened the Door for decades, Liaz!” the young wizard winced at his Master's harsh tone—usually Zimanen did not display anything other than patience and wisdom. “Would that we could manage to do so successfully,” He paused, frowning, “and in time, where would we send them?”

Then the only non-human of the five stepped forward, suave-green hands in the air to calm her fellow Archwizards.

“Our knowledge extends further than Idhún,” she said, serenely, and waited until Liaz, Zimanen, and Qaydar, the third Archwizard, nodded to continue. “There are other worlds, where the Astral Alignment has no power. Worlds where the Door would be easier to open to.”

The golden-clad man called Qaydar mused his chin, still frowning, and looked at his partners, deep in thought.

“Our kind hasn't visited Earth in—”

“That,” said the fairy, “makes no matter, Archwizard.”

“Aile is right,” Liaz added, “it is a safe place to keep both there until we find a way to put an end to this.”

“Very well, then.” Zimanen agreed after some time. “Still, we would have no way of retrieving them once the Halin-norea is over.”

Aile smiled lop-sidedly, like only fairies could, and regally let her silky white hair fall over her all-black eyes.

“Yes,” she said, “we do.”

 

The young wizard, having allowed his mind to focus elsewhere than what his superiors were discussing, was startled by the arrival of the same man who had been able to bring a live dragon, small as it was, to Kazlunn Tower. They'd locked eyes before, when time was not a pressing enemy as it was now, but they didn't know each other. At least, the other didn't know who he was. Because everyone in Nandelt, the five human kingdoms, even someone like the young wizard who had spent most of his life in a Tower, knew who the heir to Vanissar's throne was: a man of seventeen years, trained at the prestigious Nurgon Academy in the art of sword-fighting and battle strategy, as expected of a prince.

A sword at his hip, a cape over his regal shoulders, the prince knelt by the golden dragon, his eyes as moved by the sight of the last of the species as the wizard was.

After a short while, he patted with infinite care the dragon's tiny head and looked at the wizard.

“You must be the one who saved the unicorn,” he said. Although how he had come to that, he didn't know.

“Yes, I am,” the wizard said, not knowing whether to address the prince as manners required it or let him be the one to ask it of him.

But the prince seemed to care very little about protocol. He reached out a gloved hand at the wizard, his chocolate-brown eyes filled with graveness.

“I'm Alsan of Vanissar,” he said.

The wizard took the hand and shook it respectfully.

“I'm sorry, Your Highness. I hadn't—” he said, bowing his head.

 Alsan smiled briefly.

“Here I'm just an outsider,” he said, slowly regaining his royal serious expression. “What is your name?”

Distractedly rubbing his thumb across Lunnaris' skinny front legs, the wizard looked up again.

“Shail,” he said, but did not add his family name, nor where he came from, nor that he had been living there in that Tower for longer than he could remember.

“Do you mean to send word to your family that you've safely arrived?” Alsan asked conversationally. “There's a rider downstairs awaiting the last missives to be sent.”

Maybe because he was still wearing his traveling cape, Shail supposed the prince hadn't noticed the robes beneath them and what wearing them meant.

“My family doesn't know I saved Lunn—I mean, the last unicorn.” he said, and threw back his cape a little so Alsan could see. “I'm a wizard.”

Alsan nodded, understanding the implications. He himself had spent quite some time away from court and his king father, Brun of Vanissar, but a brief yet direct letter was due now that Alsan was not just a prince but a world-wide hero.

“Still,” he said, “it would do no harm to let them know.” Then, he turned to point at the three Archwizards and the fairy, Master of Derbhad Tower. “From what I have heard, they might still need us.”

Shail was about to turn too and reply, yet the Archwizards called for a gathering that same second, and it was all he could do to acknowledge that Alsan had been right.

 

“… therefore, it has been decided and agreed upon that until the Astral Alignment recedes, both dragon and unicorn shall be sent and shall remain on Earth.” As master of Kazlunn Tower, Zimanen had been appointed to share the news, and he did so with Liaz, Aile, and Qaydar at his side, in front of all wizards who had come and all messengers and common people who had climbed the stairs of the Tower to hear this. “Once it does, we will reopen the Door to travel to Earth and retrieve them.”

“But the Door hasn't been opened in ages!” someone shouted.

The third Archwizard, who had remained neutral to this point, rose his voice so that there was no confusion possible when he clarified:

“After several deliberations, we have come to the conclusion that for the sake of the Magical Order, and all Idhún for that matter, we will remove the seal on the Door, allowing it to be opened again in the future by anyone, and not just us.” By us, Qayday assumed, everyone understood he meant the three Archwizards, who were still the only ones with enough power to open it.

The crowd in the ample room began to whisper.

“Silence!” called Aile. “For this to be accomplished, we shall open the Door now.”

“Anyone who desires to travel to the other world may do so as the creatures will, yet beware, there will be no turning back,” finished Liaz, and as soon as she did, people began to line behind the dragon and unicorn, people who were willing to leave their home-world in place of suffering at it. “And while the spell is to begin, we would like to ask for volunteers to travel to Earth after the sky clears to retrieve both creatures.”

“I volunteer!” said Alsan and Shail at once, before either could register the other had said it too. Wizard and prince stared into each other's eyes for one sole moment until Liaz called them forward and the crowd quieted to see who had spoken.

“Rise,” Qaydar commanded, and both men did as bid. Shail's heart was pounding, he knew what he was risking and leaving behind, but there had been no purer wish than the one driving him to call his name in, even if fear was making him wish too that he could just hold the prince's hand for reassurance. Alsan, next to him, seemed as neutral as ever, proud, yes, but unbothered by fear or doubt. Perhaps all princes were as resolute; Shail would not know. “What are your names?”

“I,” Alsan began, “am Alsan of Vanissar, heir to King Brun.”

The Archwizards nodded, surprised and respectful. Aile eyed him solemnly but said nothing.

“And you?” Liaz kept on.

Zimanen meant to smile. It was one of his youngest graduates volunteering, and as Master, it filled him with joy, but the boy was a youth of fifteen, and perhaps it was wrong to let him through the Door. Nevertheless, he also remained in silence. The choice was made, it was up to his disciple now. And that too made him proud.

“Shail of Nanetten,” the young wizard said, dodging his Master's eyes at first until he found deep admiration in them, and his spirits rose.

“Very well,” Aile said, beaming encouragingly. She scanned the room in search for more candidates but no one spoke. She did find more of her kind, fairies, and in the crowd and in their stances she found something else she had been seeking: an approval she'd never get from the Archwizards, and an absolute statement—the unicorn must be protected at all costs, so is the will of magic.

Quietly, she fixed her eyes back at both volunteers.

“We will be sending word to both your families about what you have done here today. And now,” Zimanen turned to Liaz and Qaydar, letting Aile understand that she would not participate in the magical event this time, although, she thought, little did they know … “it is time to open the Door.”

               

Barely six magic lines drawn over the center of the room, that was the Door, still unopened, the passage to other worlds.

As the room at large kept their eyes on them, the wizards set to work, joining hands and minds, the Archwizards in the middle, to weave the spell that had not been done for decades.

                To Alsan, who had never been present at an event of these proportions, it was but a spectacle of intricate lights and power that made the candles in the Tower flicker. But to Shail, it was magic at its finest. If the simplest variable was miscalculated, everything would go to waste. It took great amounts of concentration and magical power to open a Door, making it almost impossible for one sole and ordinary man to attain it, although there were stories about wizards so able it posed no problem.

In the very midst of the drawn Hexagon they had placed Lunnaris and Alsan's little dragon, who could barely open their eyes now, and a small group of people who were to leave Idhún. The otherworldly sound of the three moons and suns up in the sky, still in alignment, was enough to keep the silence.

And that silence prevailed when the eyes of every wizard participating in the spell opened wide and a flash of blinding light, followed by a sound so roaring it resembled thunder, flooded the whole story of the Tower. When the light dissipated, there was only a black hexagon on the floor, a two-way door that now only showed one way.

The wizards breathed out in unison, and Shail finally held Alsan's hand. The prince squeezed back.

       

* * *

“Come in.” Ashran simply said, for there were no more words needed. His tall, bulky figure eclipsed the only sight of the sky and horizon from the balcony where he stood alone. He was watching a feeble, thin patch of light too bright to be anything other than magical surge from behind trees and mountains, and he was watching like the meaning of it couldn't disrupt his plans even if it was likely to.

The ample door opened to reveal a massive snake of blueish and opal-black scales the size of a human hand, with fangs half as long as its head and eyes so vibrant you could fall into them, and with two perfectly folded wings both of scale and membrane skin slithering at both sides of the gigantic body.

_My lord, the Door has been opened_ , the shek hissed telepathically.

Ashran did not turn.

Then he continued watching the skies, bloody and deafening at his command, hands at his back. There was another sound, muffled by the shield of the walls but high-pitched, one he was fighting to tolerate for the moment, that Zeshak, King of Sheks, soon dared mention.

_It's the boy_ , he hissed. _He will not go quiet._

Ashran took a deep breath.

“Bring him, Zeshak,” he said. “Him and your eggs.”

_Is it time?_ the snake asked, coiling his body in perfect circles, and moving closer to the Necromancer until his head and Ashran's were at a height. _Has the Door been breached?_

“It's been opened, as you came here to tell me, yes,” Ashran said. “But I sensed a disturbance, its light was too weak for the opening to have gone … successfully.”

_Then why call forth the boy, my lord?_

“The sooner, the better.” Ashran merely responded. Then he turned. A man of no age and no race. Grey hair, like silver, fell limply from his head. His shoulders could have burdened the weight of the world. He was a broad and strong as a god. And as dark and menacing as only a god could be.

He repeated his orders, and his silvery eyes glimmered in the dimness, terrifying enough to scare a shek.

“Bring me the boy and your eggs, Zeshak.”

Zeshak did as told.

It was hours later, when the boy's screams intensified to then clear and only one shek baby remained, that Ashran brought the suns and moon to their original position in the universe, satisfied.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you absolutely sure of this?” Zimanen asked Shail privately, when Alsan was talking to the Archwizards about how they planned to get Lunnaris and his dragon back, moments before sending the two boys to Earth.

The young wizard hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say to that.

“You asked for volunteers, and I offered,” he finally said.          

The Archwizard looked him in the eye. After all those years in the Tower, he had come to know his students well, not in vain had he raised them. Shail had been there since early childhood.

“That,” he said, “was not what I asked.”

Surprising his Master, Shail smiled broadly.

“She's the last unicorn,” he said. “I want to be the one to bring her back just like I was the one to bring her here.”

Zimanen smiled back.

“Brave words,” he said encouragingly. “But be alert, Earth is not a world we know well anymore. Even for a short trip, as the one you're to take, it would do good to be extra careful, do you understand?”

Shail nodded, not really understanding what his Master meant.

“Earthians do not know yet about us.” Zimanen confided lastly.

 

For the years that were to come, Shail would remember the excitement and dread he felt about the inter-spacial travel, the hexagon drawn on the floor coming to life again, Alsan at his side, looking confident, but probably feeling something similar, how light flooded every inch of the Tower for the second time that day, and how at the very last minute, when he and Alsan were being swallowed by magic, a figure stepped into the hexagon and vanished into the other world before he and Alsan did.

And just as suddenly as they'd set foot on the hexagon, they left.

And then … nothing.

  

* * *

“You called, sir?” said the boy.

Ashran crossed his legs, sitting on his throne, and motioned for the boy to rise, since he was kneeling, a glimmering ice-white sword at his hand.

“The Door is blocked,” Ashran said. “When you pass through it, whoever was passing through at the moment of its blockage will too. Do you understand what that means, Kirtash?”

He spoke softly, as if the matters he talked about made little difference to him, to his plans, but didn't wait for the boy to answer or nod.

“You were raised so that opposition will cease to be so in your presence,” he said. “You're well aware of your mission. And after all these years of training, I do not believe any resistance you might find will be of annoyance to you in finishing it.”

“I shall end every soul that stays in my way,” Kirtash stated.

“Any soul,” Ashran agreed. “It is little to me whether they are Earthians or wizards. Do as you must.”

The Necromancer shifted in his chair and locked eyes with the boy, iron against arctic blue.

“All that matters, as you know,” Ashran said, “is the Prophecy.”

Kirtash nodded almost imperceptibly.

“It is time,” Ashran's voice echoed.

Kirtash stood still as Ashran opened the Door with a swiftness not even comparable to the greatest wizards', and did not move until he had landed on stable ground again.

Earth's.

 

* * *

 

And so they stepped on the drawn, lit hexagon. Looked around, farewell, though temporary, filling their hearts with that kind of sadness that's hard to rub off your soul, unlike you'd shake bread crumbs off your coat, and the light swallowed them, wrapping their young, strong bodies up as time snake-rounded the fifteen-year-old wizard and the proud Prince of Vanissar, to take them to the other world, the world with dying magic, the world of no gods.

Later, untouched by time, the warrior and the wizard arrived.

Their eyes opened carefully, instinctively afraid of the light they had been warned there would be, but they saw the usual, familiar darkness of the early night when the moon isn't up in the sky yet and nature smells fresher. It wasn't the Idhunian night, for sure, they thought, but—were they on Earth already?

It struck the young, recently-graduated wizard first. He turned to his partner, thinking of the right way to ask the question properly to a prince.

The only problem was, they were alone under the starry, moonless night. No unicorn or dragon could be seen, maybe they'd landed elsewhere, it occurred to him.

“Do you think this is it?” he finally asked his older companion, who was silently and seriously admiring the landscape, as though nothing crossed his mind. The wizard's voice was salty and fresh like the sea-land where he'd been brought up, although there was too the soft, wizardly accent he'd picked up from his study years in the Tower.

The prince, apparently deaf to his question, was absent-mindedly stroking the hilt of his sword, Sumlaris the Unbeatable, one of the rare legendary weapons on Idhún, and frowning. He didn't look like the kind of person one would call friendly, Shail thought, although he had been plenty nice before. Maybe friendliness wasn't the most important quality you'd request a hero to have, but physical strength and a cold-thinking, fair, well-organized mind—even if the lucky owner of all that didn't even stop to consider a bit of social interaction with whom he was supposed to work with and in such a situation.

Shail, on the other side, was a tall, slim dark-haired graduated that had never grabbed a sword in his life, let alone a legendary one. He was a dreamer, a quality most appreciated in wizards, not a fighter, even if he had a unicorn baby to protect too, and was just as much a grown man as Alsan, age difference aside. He may not have been a well-built, strong hero at all, yet he believed he had the right disposition to help out the world—though it wasn't clear anymore which world they were being heroes on.

“You're a wizard,” the prince suddenly said with a low, beautiful voice, harmonic like a king's and confident like a prince's. But harsh and demanding, even if later on Alsan regretted speaking like that, “you're the one to answer that.”

There was a silence for some moments, Shail, after some thought, said calmly:

“I'm here to ensure Idhún's survival, not to argue about who's the one that should know all about everything.”

To his surprise, the prince smiled agreeably at him, never truly leaving behind his cold-looking, serious expression.

Still, Shail noticed some superiority in that smile, and though he didn't like it or agree with it, he knew very well he was a prince and that royals weren't very much used to normal people.

He smiled too. He did like people.

“This isn't the other world,” he said. “I think it's a micro-world.”

Alsan blinked twice, looking at him, not understanding just as his companion had expected. They both started to walk, heading to the edge of the forest they'd appeared in so that he could show Alsan what he'd seen. He was positively sure it was not Earth, and the fact that they were alone there had been Shail's first clue, but as to where they were, nobody knew just yet.

 

When the huge dark trees forming the small wood dissipated they saw the mountains in the distance, far away from the green, and the wizard smiled again when he peered at the horizon. Alsan frowned at the sight of his smile.

“What?”

“It ends here—the micro-world, I mean.” Shail explained. “That's how I could tell it's not Earth or Idhún.” he pointed somewhere between two and four steps forward where he could very clearly see the end, unlike Alsan. “The force-field.”

The prince stared at him for some seconds, then crossed his arms.

“What, in the name of Nurgon, is a force-field?”

“Well,” he began, doubtful, “let's just say it circles this micro-world, preventing us or any other creature that may inhabit it from escaping physically.” He smiled to himself, as though he were reciting some definition in class. “It's a magical object.” Alsan's frown turned into a dangerously serious expression.

“Holy Irial …” he swore. He may not have had any instruction like Shail's but he was educated well-enough as to understand what that statement meant. “So we are, please correct me if I'm mistaken, trapped in this world where there seems to be no sign of my dragon and your unicorn?”

Shail's grin broadened. If they were trapped in there apparently alone and the Archwizards had meant for them to get there, then Lunnaris and Alsan's golden dragon had to be somewhere. In the meantime, though, Shail was happier than anyone to meddle with some adventure.

“Every spell has a counter-spell,” he said. “This place was created with a purpose, if I guess which, I might be able to find a loophole in the structure and get us out.”

The prince nodded. That was enough for him.

“Then I hope you guess fast,” he half-japed.

“It's not very big,” Shail commented. “We should check everything. One never knows what one'll find. Probably the unicorn and the dragon _are_ around.”

“Okay,” Alsan said.

 

As a precaution, Alsan had decided he'd investigate the closest regions of the force-field while Shail did all the walking around, because he wasn't entirely sure his dragon wouldn't suddenly make an appearance out of the woods and wanted to be there if it happened.

He'd taken off some clothes too. In Idhún the weather was milder, even if they had three suns and three moons, in that micro-world the heat was not rough either, but sweat stuck to the skin and didn't evaporate with time like in his home-planet. He'd kept the sword near, though. Shail had hinted there might have been other creatures they still didn't know of, he wanted to be ready for battle—maybe, he was already craving battle, what he had been born to do.

Time drifted slowly too. He'd thought that his friend would do a quick check and come back right away to show him the way out. That's how he supposed magic worked. It was there to make things easier, not to complicate them, but Alsan was starting to see that most times it did both. He thought of his father and brother, who he had never said goodbye to.

Alsan blinked to keep the feelings at bay. It all had happened too fast to process it. The whole world had gone dark, there had been this strange alignment of the three moons and suns caused by Ashran the Necromancer who'd sent sheks all over the place, and then dragons had begun to fall from the sky, dead; next, unicorns were found agonizing in the forest where they lived.

Dragons weren't strictly important to Alsan's world, they did symbolize power and strength and were worshiped in most cultures, but they were nowhere as relevant to Idhún's survival as unicorns were. Unicorns' task was to concede the gift of magic to those they touched with their horns, and magic was vital in Idhún. It kept the planet alive. Without magic, they were all doomed. Or at least, that had been what everybody in the Magical Order had said; that unicorns would not go extinct. Dragons could suck it.

Yet, almost at the time, a rumor, a prophecy had spread throughout the world about a unicorn and a dragon being key to vanquishing the Necromancer's empire when the time came. The whole planet had started to rummage the most distant, far-off places in Idhún in search of a live dragon and unicorn. He, as prince of one of the human kingdoms, had set off to it with pride. It made him proud to be able to help the world he loved. Shail too had gone on a quest, but as far as Alsan was concerned, his had been on a more personal level. Wizards had a thing for unicorns, so he could suppose what creature Shail had gone searching for first.

The two of them had found what they were looking for and had brought the dying creatures, under the deadly light of the astral conjunction, to the Tower of Kazlunn.

Then they'd met. Both handsome, courageous young men, both ready to sacrifice their lives to save the babies.

But Alsan was starting to worry about never finding the way to Earth, about never seeing Yandrak, his dragon, ever again. And logic didn't ease his uneasiness.

He knew very little about Earth, had no way of making sure his dragon was safe there, and was seemingly trapped somewhere that was neither his home nor his destiny. Shail probably had been told stories, he thought, apathetic, he was likely to know that kind of stuff. Perhaps he, with that eternal smile, didn't feel worried because there was nothing to freak out about and Earth was a safe place indeed. Alsan shook his head to drive the thoughts away.

They'd get out. Eventually.

Then he heard it. A distant, mumbled sound coming from the woods, maybe not even from them but from farther; he drew his sword, grabbed the hilt tight and felt a surge of its essence filling him. He felt glad for it then, when his heart beat stronger, getting ready for whatever was coming to him.

“Alsan!” Shail shouted, focusing for one second on a spell so he could see where he was going in the woods. When it was done, he forced himself to speed up, intuiting his partner was not far from him.

The trees seemed to spread more widely as he kept running, until he saw the suave flickering of the force-field and Alsan's cloak and shirt neatly tucked next to a rock just outside of the forest. He felt relieved the sword wasn't there, it was the only way he had of knowing Alsan was safe. He had a hunch that Alsan never left without his sword.

Minutes later, sitting on the fresh grass, waiting for him to turn up, Shail saw Alsan coming back, walking near the force-field, almost touching it with his bare, muscular arm.

“Oh,” the prince only said as he approached and grabbed his clothes, sword in its sheath. “So it was you.”

“Yeah.” In his waiting, Shail had almost forgotten about his hurry to tell him something. “Look, I found a house—empty—just at the other end of the woods.”

“Good,” he conceded. “Where does that help us?”

Shail got serious for the first time. He knew he wasn't being taken into account.

“It's a refuge. We can stay there until we figure out where we are and where Lunnaris and your dragon are and how to come back …” Shail stopped mid-sentence, and looked up at the sky as if everything he wanted and needed to know was up there, just waiting until he reached out.

Alsan looked at him for some time, trying to get some information out of the dreaminess in Shail's eyes, and how they sparkled up when he finally lowered his gaze and met his own.

“I can feel her,” he finally said.

“Feel who?” Alsan asked.

“An essence.” his voice sounded distant, as though he was elsewhere, his mind far away. “The one that lets us travel, the one that makes this place invisible to those who don't know about it … She's called the Soul,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Alsan saw a deep, infinite sorrow in them and his heart ached with a pain that wasn't his own and that wasn't Shail's either.

The prince of Vanissar put an arm around the wizard.

“Alsan …” Shail said, barely above a mutter, “do you remember the Third Era? When wizards were massacred and believed to be traitors and worshipers of the Seventh God?”

Alsan nodded, a bit confused, since he could hardly see any link between an essence and the Third Era.

“I couldn't forget, Nurgon fought against them,” he said solemnly, to soon come to realize Shail could have probably felt much better if he hadn't mentioned it. Nurgon had fought for the priests and priestesses, worshipers of the Three Gods and Three Goddesses, and Alsan had spent a good chunk of his life being trained by knights whose ancestors had probably murdered Shail's fellow wizards.

Those had been hard times for the Magical Order. It was no wonder Shail had such strong feelings about it. Idhún may have forgotten, but the Order had not.

“Does this … essence,” he said, reluctantly. Even if Alsan lived on a world where magic was as real as the next thing, he did not believe in the supernatural, “have a lot to do with that?”

Shail shook his head, recomposing himself.

 “It's the soul of this micro-world. It's …” He paused, wondering how he could describe it to someone non-magical, “sentient.” Then, Shail realized it was for the best to just say it. He looked at Alsan in the eye. “We're not the first ones to be here. On the Third Era, wizards didn't just die or vanish from the world, they must have opened the Door to come to Earth and found this instead. That's why there were so few back then, because those who weren't murdered or locked up escaped. I didn't know enough about Doors to put it together, but it must be it.” he paused again, his eyes lively, filled with growing hope. The Third Era and its blood-shedding days letting something else through. “Alsan,” he said, as the price watched, somewhat moved by the side of the story he'd never thought he'd identify with, “those wizards might have lived.”

Amused by Shail's ramblings, which made more sense that he'd care to admit, Alsan followed the wizard, who, driven by his powerfully connected thoughts and hunches, could not do anything else but move around.

“… and if they're not here, because I can only feel us, then they must have found a way to Earth—or even a way back home!”

He continued tying up loose ends as they followed the path in the woods, and Alsan listened, eventually sharing his view, though sporadically.

“I can't feel any Soul,” he said once, which made Shail stop dead in the middle of the forest, and Alsan suspected had killed off his next string of thought.

“That must be because you're not a wizard,” he replied softly, even if Alsan did not look appalled in the slightest.

After a few times of getting lost in the woods, the foliage let Alsan and Shail through at a clearing where a house stood. But it was no simpleton house, Shail recognized the pattern it had been designed with almost at once. It was a bubbly structure, roundish, formed by one central bubble with several others, smaller, phased halfway through the main one. In Idhún's middle lands, where the celestians, humanoid people of celestial blue skin, hence the name, and bald heads, who neglected any form of conflict, whether physical or verbal, had their cities, houses were similar to this one in front of them. At the very top of the three-story dwelling there was a terrace big enough for a dragon to land on, perceptible even from the ground. In Celestia, if Shail remembered correctly, those terraces were mainly for use of the native bird, the haai, and its riders and care-takers.

Alsan looked at Shail as if they'd been thinking the same, and both nodded, circling the house until they found the entrance.

It wasn't until they roamed the house from wall to wall and arrived at a wonderfully enormous room with a two-story library and Shail flipped through some of the books gathering dust on the shelves that they knew where they were at last.

Alsan was reading a book of his own, about the Third Era and the first migrations out of Idhún's hostility towards magic, that he thought Shail might want to consult, but the wizard had something of his own to show him:     

A centuries-old drawing on thick paper, barely a sketch of the structure of the building and a few notes in Idhunian. Shail pointed at the top of the ancient page, where the artist had written in beautiful yet small calligraphy:

Limbhad.

In Idhunian, it meant “The House On The Border.”

 

There was no one inside the house. Three stories and a basement of empty rooms and dusty bookshelves containing wonders old as history itself, that was all Alsan and Shail found.

Through the Soul, the wizard had accessed a part of its memories, about previous inhabitants of Limbhad, even a little about its building process, and with it he finally could establish that, as he had expected, anyone who had lived in The House On The Border must have at some point either traveled forth, to Earth, or back, home.

But the Soul had no recollection of a golden-scaled baby dragon and a pale shaking unicorn whatsoever.

With a rumbling stomach, Alsan had frowned at this new information.

“If they're not here,” he proposed, sitting, arms crossed, on a bar-stool, “then we should go back to alert the wizards that something went wrong.”

Shail nodded, agreeing, but Alsan caught him gazing longingly at all the books he would have to leave behind if they did.

“Perhaps the Soul can take us back.”

“Perhaps?” The prince lifted an eyebrow.

“Let me try.” And he stayed very still, his eyes closed, allowing the essence of Limbhad to feel its way through, until he could sense it inside him, like the warmth of the Suns on a spring morning spreading gradually but surely around his body.

Following the structure of a teleporting spell, he humbly projected in his mind forward to the Soul the image of his home, Kazlunn Tower, with vivid detail. From the unicorn-horn delicate shape of the tower to the saltiness of the sea waves licking at the cliff on which the tower stood proudly. But all the Soul could present him with was a blank wall.

Shail opened his eyes again.

“She won't let me,” he apologized. “It's like she somehow … can't.”

“We need to get back,” Alsan said, serious. “This doesn't seem right.”

Shail hesitated for a moment, unsure of what else to say.

“I told you, I can't—”

“Can you open the Door?” Alsan said, expectant, to encounter a very puzzled Shail, who was blushing, as if he'd been presented with a compliment.

Nevertheless, the wizard shook his black-haired head energetically and settled on a chair next to Alsan.

“I'm just a wizard, I'm not like …” He paused, uncomfortable at the realization that probably any name he chose would sound strange to the prince. “At my age, with my lack of experience—”

“Listen, there's a whole world awaiting our arrival,” Alsan said. “Depending on our arrival.” He looked very deeply into Shail's brown eyes, aware that his words were just as sharp and uncaring as possible, and breathed in, not looking away just yet, softening his tone. He knew what pressure was, he didn't like to apply it unless necessary. “There's not much I can do, but there is a lot you can.”

Then both boys exhaled.

“I don't know the spell,” Shail said at last. “And, honestly, I think it would be wiser to rest … or at least read some more before we try anything. If the Soul can't let us travel back, I'm pretty sure the Door can't be opened.”

“Why could that be?” Alsan asked, showing interest. His short fuse had faded away.

Shail ruffled his hair, thinking.

“Someone could be blocking it,” he replied. “Up until the Archwizards opened it for us, nobody but them could do the spell, maybe someone's done something similar this time—” He opened his eyes wide and made Alsan understand with just one word. “Ashran!”

“He wouldn't!”

Shail stood on his feet again, pacing up and down the room, hands in the air, gesturing, as he put his thoughts together.

“He must've noticed the Door was being used, and figured out why, and then he must've blocked it so that neither dragon nor unicorn survived the Alignment.” He was rambling. “What he doesn't know is that they did. Even so, Alsan, that's why we're here, the wizards must've redirected the destiny we were being sent to before Ashran did what he did.”

“Do you think he's done something to the wizards?”

Apparently, Shail hadn't stopped to think about that just yet, because he suddenly quit pacing and stared at Alsan.

“I'm almost certain,” Shail stated, then he sat back on a stool, only to get back up again and head for the library “We need to go back. I'm going to find that goddamn spell and open the Door if it's the last thing I do.”

The prince followed dully, a heavy burden in his chest beginning to form, and watched Shail's hard-as-steel determination deflate slowly with each book he got his hands on.

After what seemed to be longer than it was, both wizard and prince felt another pressing need, that of obtaining food soon, but ignored it for the sake of their return to Idhún. Alsan had been doing some reading on the House, trying to find another way out, even if it meant slithering on sticky mud and going for days without water, and wasn't very lucky in it, although he did find a training room—or to be more precise, a map of it amongst the pile of maps of Limbhad Shail had dug up earlier—, which cheered him up a little.

Shail eventually did come across the spell, and if he was aware of how unlikely it was he could manage to do it, Alsan didn't notice it when the wizard put down a heavy volume on the library table and said, very clearly:

“I'm going to get us home.”

He drew a total of eight magical hexagons that evening. All remained black.

He would have tried for another eight if Alsan had let him, but the prince knew a tired man when he saw one, in and outside the battlefield, and helped Shail put every book in its place once it was obvious that Door was not to be opened for now. Shail, untiring, meant to keep trying, though, to work on his magic and power.

Still, when sitting yet again on the chairs in the living room, breathing the same air other wizards had centuries ago, it became crystal clear that they needed to get their hands on food. The storage room was empty. They'd filled in some pots with water from the river, but that was all there was.

So, their stomachs empty, exhausted as they were from the interspatial travel and the hours reading ancient books, Shail politely asked the Soul to show him the way to another world, to Earth.

And the Soul let them through.              


	2. Chapter 2

“Do you think they'll be here?” Alsan had asked.

Silence, and darkness, were his only answer.

The small forest where they'd appeared was no different to Limbhad's, but as they made their way across under a moonless sky, they began to realize the likeness it and Idhún's shared was nothing but limited.

Through the dark green tree leaves, the wind filtered carrying the scent of earth after it's rained and a muffled rustling sound, as gentle as the breeze. It was not a powerful combination to senses that had grown accustomed to the rich smell of flowers in the Forest of Derbhad, by Idhún's east coasts, and the purity every single root, leaf, or grain of sand gave off a world away at Drackwen and the woods that seemed to belong to the unicorns.

This particular patch of trees was very much alive, unarguably, its inhabitants breathed with a singularity of their own, their inhales and exhales regular as the Suns' trajectories in the Idhunian skies, but there stopped the magic—in fact, there hardly was any magic here at all.

So, unfazed by it, the prince and the wizard moved on to more striking sights …

Like the yellow stars that hung limply between earth and sky, taking up rectangular spaces, where other chunks of them began only to end the same way. Had they been any closer to this singular universe they were gazing at open-mouthed but in quietness, the discover of moving orange and red lights back and forth many meters below the “stars”, their awe would have peaked.

Fortunately, they only commented to one another in hushed voices on the strangeness of it and the beauty of the unknown, feeling smaller at the display.

A few miles farther, the forest now behind them, they encountered more stars still in mid-air, and something closer to familiarity in the shape of one-story houses surrounded by greenness and these fascinating yellow stars that made it easier to see where you put your feet. Curiously enough, upon their descent, Shail noted a change in the ground. It had ceased to mold to his step to now absorb the impact of it, and it was hard as stone, not in the fashion of Idhún's cobbled streets, but in an even surface that melted itself with the grass by every house. The wizard soon realized it was a road.

It also didn't take him long to catch Alsan, who in contrast wasn't observing everything around him, fondling distractedly the hilt of Sumlaris, more fixated on spying an enemy that wasn't there than in watching his step, which made him stumble rather inelegantly on a thin but firm-looking piece of hardware neither had spotted before, and from which one of the many yellow stars hung.

Before flashing a smile at Alsan picking himself off the road and finally helping him up, Shail couldn't help but look at the structure in front of him and conclude: Perhaps they're not stars at all … But there was no way to know for sure, since Earth was a strange world above all, so they pressed on, each paying vivid attention to what their minds found most curious.

Alsan pointed at what resembled compact metal carriages with odd small wheels and no harnesses for a towing animal, and frowned.

 

“Earth doesn't seem as interesting as I might have thought,” he said, careful to keep his voice low, “it just seems …”

Shail finished it for him, as always, with a smile.

“… advanced.”

The prince nodded in agreement.

“But still there's no food,” he half-groaned to himself.

His companion was tempted to direct at him something that in the Tower, among failed spells and unsuccessful library researches, had been common to hear from Master Zimanen and the graduates: “Patience.” But as Shail watched Alsan's face slowly return to just mild wariness, he came to the conclusion that in Nurgon they might also teach something of the sort to knights in training, and for a moment he believed their kindness about failure might not have been as vast as the wizards', so he said nothing.

And then, barely some meters away, Earth became the mystery Alsan had been hoping for.

There was someone sitting by a “star” holding a book. With his heart pounding in excitement and admittedly a hint of fear, Shail approached the light, followed by Alsan, still as inexpressive as before, until he was almost under it and could see for himself that it was just a girl, just an ordinary human girl.

She stood almost at once, and shut the book loudly, color rising in her cheeks.

“That's not funny, Johnny!” she said. “I told you we'd see each other at school.”

But instead of the answer she was expecting, an accusation from one of her classmates of preferring books over people, she saw Shail and Alsan come into the light, visibly like her and visibly not Johnny. Instinctively, she could feel they were much, much more, almost … —she stopped to find the right, precise word to describe the aura those two boys had around them—other-worldly. And when Shail flashed one of his world-saving smiles that made Alsan wonder how he hadn't managed to stop war with them, she somehow knew they were. And most importantly, she knew she didn't mind.

“Did you catch what she said?” Alsan whispered, leaning in so Shail could hear him.

The wizard shook his head and replied in the same tone:

“No, she spoke too fast.”

 Alsan then voiced what was running through both his and Shail's mind:

“She doesn't look any different than we do.”

“She looks perfectly human,” Shail agreed. He was eyeing her moved by a deep curiosity, hoping perhaps, far-fetched as it could be, that this girl was an exiled Idhunian, and soon he realized that the girl seemed to be expecting something, looking at them with big eyes full of questions, quite like his own.

At one point, she took a couple of steps forward, hesitant.

“Hi,” she simply said, although neither Alsan nor Shail understood since she hadn't spoken in Idhunian. “I'm sorry, I haven't seen you in the neighborhood before.”

Alsan and Shail stared at each other, perplexed at this language they'd never heard before, and then at the girl, who stood where she was, not understanding why these two boys of around her eyes didn't say a word.

She tried again.

“Do you need anything?” Something in the sweetness, in the carefulness in her voice brought Alsan and Shail back, and somehow they comprehended, not the words, the intention behind them, but couldn't express their own or return the favor.

“We don't—” started Shail in patient Idhunian. “We don't speak the same tongue,” he said to her.

He heard Alsan mumble right after:

“It's a little obvious, isn't it?”

 But the girl, though having paid exquisite attention, did not catch any of that.

“I'm sorry, I don't think I speak that,” she said, but still did not leave. She was just there, standing, trying to understand through what she saw, drawn to the two strangers on her doorstep.

Shail turned to Alsan, biting his lip, his stomach roaring with hunger.

“What do we do? Do you think we could try to communicate with her another way?”

“No,” Alsan said simply. “Let's get food somewhere else.”

“If she lives in this settlement, she'll know where to find some.”

Alsan smiled sarcastically.

“Try passing that message to her.”

“How?” said Shail, thinking. “Maybe through gestures, we could—”

“I'm not waving my arms around so that she can tell is if there's anything to hunt in those woods.”

Shail sighed.

“I'll do it then.”

He got closer to the girl, who out of instinct stepped towards him, and after a few frustrating attempts at gesturing and repeating out loud simpler and simpler versions of “we'd like to eat something, is there anything to hunt around?”, he got the message through. She smiled widely and nodded enthusiastically, then surprised Shail as Alsan watched amused by taking his hands in hers and proceeding to gesture that she was going to get into the house and that they were to wait until she came back.

In her hurry, she left her book outside, neatly placed beside the streetlight, for Shail and Alsan to hurdle around, although it was Shail who carefully picked it up, inquisitive, as Alsan stood guard.        

“She seems eager to help,” Alsan commented.

“Yeah,” Shail said, the bulk of his focus on the book in his hands, as if trying to decipher the strange lines on its cover. “I wonder if it's Earth's way.”

“From my point of view, it doesn't look like it,” Alsan said, then Shail tilted his head, wondering.

“Why?”

Alsan shrugged.

“The place should be crawling with willfully helping people if that was the case,” he replied. “We should hurry back, it's too quiet here.”

But Shail simply smiled again.

“You're a little paranoid, Alsan.”

He only stared at him in all his glory and in what was his most serious face, he replied:

“Today we witnessed our world's most sacred laws go to hell,” he said. “I think you should be wary too, especially of a strange planet whose rules you ignore.” He paused for a brief moment. “And its inhabitants.”

“She doesn't look dangerous,” Shail argued, and Alsan stared.

“Do I?”

Shail was going to reply and say that indeed, he did, when the girl emerged back into the light, carrying a bunch of packages she placed in Shail's arms. Once he had them in his grip, she smiled and gestured a sleepy goodbye, vanishing into the dark threshold as Alsan and Shail retreated into the shadows, where the wizard contacted the Soul and asked it to take them back to Limbhad.

Alsan didn't look back at the strange world, but Shail did, and inside her room, ready to bed but not to sleep, the girl did too.

 

They dined over Shail's overenthusiastic talk about her, who had predictably admired with his natural curiosity the strange way food was preserved and wrapped.

The food itself was a mystery, although Shail and Alsan were far too hungry to complain or comment about it, and once they were full, even if Alsan knew Shail had enough fascination left in him to last through the night, it took them very little time for them to access the bedrooms they'd seen around before.

They chose opposing rooms that didn't face each other directly, and it was only after he had removed his cloak and sword and laid down that Alsan thought it might have been a good idea to check on Shail. In the world he knew fifteen-year-olds were expected to behave like grown-ups, and the prince of Vanissar also knew, better than anyone, that sometimes that pressure could overwhelm as well as make one proud. But Shail, used to making a life for himself, used to distance with his loved ones, used to creative responsibility that wouldn't grant him a whole kingdom's hate, did not give Alsan reason to think he needed anything. Little did he know, though, that if Shail failed to fulfill his duty, it was not a kingdom whose mistrust he'd have, but the Magical Order's.

Alsan, on the other hand, had not a mind to dwell on the beauty of Earth to distract himself. All he could think of before drifting off to sleep was his father's face at his return, flying on the last dragon Idhún would ever see, and a pang of guilt hit him as he realized that in the event of his return, he'd probably arrive empty-handed, his head down.

Even when Alsan trusted this to his new companion years later, Alsan was aware, very much aware, that Shail would never comprehend the weight of a crown you didn't get to wear.

They broke their fast on the cold and withery remnants of dinner, their faces tired and somewhat confused at finding themselves away from home. They chatted mindlessly about the softness of the sheets they'd slept in and about their mission, concluding that it would indeed take time to find Yandrak and Lunnaris, but that as the Soul gave no signs of their deaths, they would indeed be found.

They set off quickly to explore, and were soon taken-aback by the sky. It was as dark as ever, moonless, and sunless, as if no time had passed at all.

When they traveled back to Earth, exhausted from another day of book-consulting, a sole sun was setting, signaling the passage of time there although in Limbhad there was none.

And when they walked into the set of houses, trying not to call attention to themselves, they saw a package waiting beneath a streetlight, right where an Earth girl had met them the night before.

Shail looked at Alsan with a smile—of all the things they were still madly confused about, at least they now knew they wouldn't go hungry. And, Shail never said it out loud, that they had a friend on Earth or that they soon would.

 

The next time Shail and Alsan visited Earth, it wasn't to get their daily packages of food.

Since they had no way of knowing what time it was, they made sure to travel well before breakfast so that they could catch the girl as she left their food on the stairs on her front yard. Although inexact, their calculations had not been too far off, and they got just in time to see the sunrise and marvel at all the light one sun could give off.

From Shail's neck hung a small hexagonal pendant he'd made himself overnight, something he was proud of creating.

Once the girl got out of her house and saw them, her eyes widened, but she said nothing until they came closer to her.

“I was starting to think raccoons were getting my food,” she said almost to herself with a nervous laugh.

Shail's pendant suddenly shone with its own light, and then it faded away, and he said tentatively, in words he did not know, a sentence he meant to say:

“Not raccoons, it was us all along,” he said—in English. Alsan looked at him, puzzled. He had not understood what his friend has said. The girl was awed.

“And here I was thinking you couldn't speak my language!” she said, laughing, and ruffled her honey-colored hair absent-mindedly.

“Up until now, I couldn't.” he assured her. And at seeing the confused look on her face, he rushed to add: “You'll just have to believe me.”

“Who are you? Where do you come from?”

“He's Alsan, and for the moment he can't speak like you and I.” He paused. Alsan looked at him, frowning still, asking for answers. “And I'm Shail.”      

The girl smiled.

“My name's May.”         

* * *

 

Limbhad’s quiet night was suddenly interrupted by a light. One sole pulsating light, its brightness so intense it pierced through the house as if wildfire. It wasn’t what woke Shail up, though. His body roused at a feeling, so very precise and piercing, that guided him across the corridor.

He opened Alsan’s door with violence, and ran inside. He shook the sleeping prince, barely allowing himself any time to observe the beauty in his dormant features before he did so.

When Alsan responded, his eyes opened with alert in them, and certainty. He was not one to wake up in disorientation.

Shail hurried to tell him: “The Soul’s felt something.”

Alsan grabbed his sword from under the bed. “What exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Shail said. “Magic, maybe. She’s never done this before.”

Alsan looked him in the eye. “Is it them?” 

* * *

 

The landscape that greeted them was much more different than the one around May’s house. The sky was clear blue, pierced occasionally by tall rock peaks bathed in foliage. They’d landed on a trail framed by trees. Nothing but forest and mountain surrounded it.

They glanced at each other and started running. If it was them, then they couldn’t be much further. The Soul was always precise when it had the tools to be. It always led Shail exactly where he wanted to go if it knew the place. This could be it, though both wizard and prince as they jogged forward through spruce trees.

When they ran across a curve, someone was waiting on the other side of the tree lines. Alsan and Shail halted almost immediately, their chests heaving, impatient but shocked.

There was a black-clad boy cutting them off. A boy of thirteen whose stance did not give him such a young appearance. Shail flinched instinctively and took a step back without looking at Alsan, who did not move. He seemed rooted to the earth, his hand on his sword but without unsheathing it yet. Shail could almost feel him slowly getting tenser, his muscles ready to jump if need be.

The boy turned his head to the side to observe them, and did not shift either.

It was when he spoke in Alsan and Shail’s common tongue that the prince of Vanissar grabbed his sword Sumlaris by the hilt.

“Renegades,” he only said, to himself. And one word was enough for Shail to ascertain that this was no ordinary thirteen-year-old human Earthian.

Alsan had no time for such realizations. He charged towards the boy, silent and fast, their swords meeting in mid-air, their clank clear and loud as the metal in their cores. “Go get them,” Alsan shouted at Shail. “Run!”

And Shail ran. He ran the only way he could, back. He ran past the point where he’d first landed and ran further down the mountain trail. When his head stopped shouting at him to move, it occurred to him that maybe the unicorn and the dragon were not on a human-made path but somewhere in the forest, so he ventured among the trees and rocks, panting.

He jumped over a particularly moldy formation only to find the unexpected on the trial on the other side. It was not Lunnaris or Alsan’s little dragon; it was a girl. Barely ten, brown-haired, dark-eyed, and with a gaze as pure as any he had seen. He immediately understood—this had been what the Soul had picked up on. She must have done magic, or else the Soul wouldn’t have felt her, but she was so young … Shail didn’t remember seeing her on Kazlunn Tower the day of the alignment. Could she be an exile wizard from Idhún? Was the black-clad boy perhaps an envoy from Ashran to exterminate people like her and him and Alsan, runaways?

Pressed for time, not knowing whether to stop or not, since the boy was still out there and Alsan with him, he touched the amulet he always wore now to communicate with May, and it shone.

The girl stared at him, emanating peace. Shail soon discovered he was looking at her the same way too. A two-way link. He was no celestian, but he felt it there, being birthed. The black-clad boy had been looking for this girl, she must have known, she must have been afraid—yet she was not running from him, from Shail, as he himself would have done if he was being chased.

The girl spoke first, in a small voice that did not denote any negative emotion, just curiosity.

“Who are you?” she said. Shail did not understand her language at first. Then his pendant pulsed again, and when she added to that, he picked it up at once, as if it was his own language too. “You’re not … dangerous.”

She wasn’t questioning it. It was a statement, something as clear to her as her own name. Shail was in awe.

“I’m Shail,” he said. “And no, I’m not dangerous. But there’s someone else out there who is, isn’t there?”

The girl nodded, looking around her at this reminder of danger being around the corner. “Was it because of what I did?”

 “Magic?” he ventured.

She nodded again, her eyes shining with understanding and … the feeling of belonging. She’d thought she was a freak, the only one—

“Look, um …” he looked at her and bit his lip.

“Victoria,” she told him.

“Victoria,” he said. In this tongue the name did not feel strained, yet it would have in May’s language. “Look, Victoria, I’ve someone else with me, and he’s in danger too. We need to get away. Will you come with me? Are you alone?”

“My grandma’s at the hotel.”

Shail gulped, not fully understanding. “We need to get away,” he repeated. Somewhere in him, he felt the boy approaching.

He and Victoria ran from the rocks to the trail, where, as his instincts had told, there they were—boy and man, laced in sword-fight. Shail immediately noticed a gash across Alsan’s left arm; he was holding the sword with his right hand, but Sumlaris had been forged to be held with the weight of two arms, not one. He was losing, Shail realized.

He glanced at Victoria. The girl was pale, now visibly terrified, but rooted to the ground where they stood. He didn’t think; he grabbed her hand tightly, making sure she wouldn’t let go, and used his magic to drag Alsan’s heavy body towards him, distancing him from the black-clad boy and his white as ice sword, now tainted with red. Alsan moved back like a puppet, not understanding, and when Shail could finally reach him with his other hand, the wizard closed his eyes and let the Soul take them to Limbhad before the black-clad boy’s unfazed expression.

Renegades, he said to himself once again. This would make things more interesting.

 

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!” Alsan bellowed.

Shail had landed on top of him in the library’s warm floor, Victoria a little farther, but Shail didn’t think Alsan meant that. He was furious—furious and bleeding heavily, which didn’t seem to appease his humor. On the contrary, it seemed to make him angrier.

“WE WERE SO CLOSE,” Alsan shouted again. Shail let him. Alsan’s words were full of sorrow and frustration, he was almost choking on them. “WE COULD HAVE FOUND THEM, WE COULD HAVE GONE HOME!”

Sheepishly, Shail noticed Victoria moving closer to Alsan’s injured arm and hovering her hands over the gaping round, closing her eyes as she did. Alsan did not notice a thing, and Shail did not get off from his friend’s chest. He let him scream until his voice was a thin thread and his wound was better thanks to Victoria.

Then, when Alsan’s breathing returned to normal and Victoria’s magic couldn’t go any further, Shail turned to the girl and smiled, telling her in her own tongue: “Thank you.”

“It didn’t look good,” she said.

Alsan noticed her then. His arm was no longer badly injured, although the gash was still bleeding a little. Shail got off his chest to sit by him and heal him completely. Victoria’s mouth fell open when she saw how quickly and how effortlessly Shail closed the wound until no scar remained. She didn’t know magic had a cost, and that Shail’s energy had been partially drained because of it. She’d learn it soon enough.

“Who’s this?” Alsan asked, his voice tired, his body deflating. “Why can you speak her language?”

Victoria rose her head to stare at Alsan, the strange man whose language she didn’t understand, then at Shail, her translator. The wizard took a deep breath, unhooked the amulet from his neck and put it around Victoria’s. The pendant pulsed. Now, she’d understand them speak and he wouldn’t be caught between two tectonic plates.

Shail motioned for Alsan to repeat the question, and this time he addressed it to her.

“Who are you?” Alsan said, softly.

“My name’s Victoria,” she answered calmly. “Who are you?”

“Alsan of Vanissar,” he replied. “He’s Shail of Nanetten.” A formality, he added, although he knew he girl would not understand the implications of either of those names.

“Yes,” Victoria said, “but who are you?”

It wasn’t the first question they answered for her that day. Who were they?, were did they come from?, why was Shail like her?, was she magical?, was she from their planet?, who was that boy?, could she go home?

They tried to do justice to each and every one of her inquiries, but their own knowledge was brittle as well. They filled her in as well they could about Idhún and their purpose, without going into detail once they’d realized she could not be an exiled wizard like Shail had thought. She would remember, if she had been, and she told them she’d been born on earth—yet the only other explanation for her magic, Shail said, was to have been touched by Lunnaris.

It felt like a load off both their chests to confide in someone who did have something to do with their cause. Shail had already told May some things, and while he trusted her in spite of Alsan’s refusal to do the same, Victoria was … different. Talking to her about this felt the same way in his heart that speaking about Idhún to Alsan did. He felt they did share that common ground.

Victoria might as well be the first enshrined wizard on Earth. And if she was, then Lunnaris was alive, unhurt. And probably so was Alsan’s dragon.

When the questions and Shail’s guesses ceased, they explained to her that the black-clad boy probably tracked magic, that Shail thought he was Ashran’s envoy to sabotage their mission there, and that Victoria could go back home if she didn’t use magic as long as she was on Earth. The girl went back to Switzerland, to the resort where she’d left her grandma to go on a hotel excursion, with the promise to be back soon.

And she was.

With time, she became Shail and Alsan’s little sister. Shail taught her all he could about magic at her request, to soon find out she wasn’t a full wizard—she had magic in her veins, but her skills only went so far. She was a semi-wizard, her power bestowed at having seen a unicorn but not having touched it. To Victoria, it came as a hard blow, since she admired Shail beyond her own comprehension and hoped to one day be like him, but to the young wizard it made no difference—it still meant Lunnaris had been our there recently. The only problem was … Victoria could not remember ever seeing a unicorn, nor a dragon.

It frustrated Alsan, which frustrated Shail, which frustrated Victoria.

Their alliance lasted through the years. They leaned on each other for help and company. Alsan’s relationship with Shail was more than cordial, but never went further than friendly, with the often occasional argument. Shail normally came out of those feeling a little shaken, even after he turned eighteen, and shared it with both May and her. Victoria kept his secret from Alsan, as she kept them all, and he kept hers. And Alsan, though family to them both, missed out on the close bonds they were forming. They thought he’d miss out forever, but then Jack had come along that May afternoon, and the circle had started spinning again.

Jack was thirteen, a Danish boy who dreamt of fire and snakes and whose parents had been killed by a second-in-command of Kirtash the black-clad boy, infernal enemy to the Resistance, and as soon as Jack set unwilling foot on Limbhad and was bound to stay there, Alsan changed. He found in that boy what Shail had found in Victoria. And the Resistance found in him, as in Victoria once, uncertainty, questions, and family they had to protect.

He too was living proof Lunnaris was still alive, through the years, unhurt by Kirtash’s hands, concealed safely somewhere on Earth.

Shail spent years thinking that maybe Alsan wished for clear clues like those that his dragon was alive too. But he also thought that Alsan had missed the obvious—both prince and wizard had been there to witness it, the briefest yet most intense of glances between dragon and unicorn, all that time ago in Kazlunn. Those two creatures, as the two people who had united them, were bonded for life.

If Lunnaris was alive, so was the dragon. And if the Resistance found them, they’d be together.

Shail was sure of that.

And like May liked to tell him as their friendship progressed and she taught him all there was to know about Earth that Victoria was too young to grasp, Shail’s guesses were usually accurate, so there was nothing to worry about, not really…


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as you may see from here on, I skip almost anything that in the books is an important plot point, and I just write silly stuff about Shail and Alsan

Three years later...

  
“I never meant to come between you and him,” May said, but Shail couldn’t figure out whether she was serious or just fucking with him.  
Ever since May and him had learned to communicate via magic amulets, he’d shown up personally three times every day to pick up the food she left for him. He’d pop up in the literal middle of the road, and she’d rush to open the door and hand it in. Then, one day, they’d started talking. And now Shail knew more about the planet than May had ever hoped to teach him.  
May had been eager to show him around, give him all the resources available so he’d satisfy his thirst for knowledge. In three years, she’d taught him English as best she could, she’d introduced him to the sweet pleasures of modern fiction and the many ways to enjoy it; and in return, he’d taught her his mother tongue, shown her around a world she couldn’t see or touch, and made her long for a home she’d never have.  
They’d become friends so quickly Shail couldn’t even remember for how long he’d been spending the evenings and nights in May’s room, looking at the ceiling, or lying on the roof of her car, staring at the stars and wondering if either Limbhad and Idhún were hiding somewhere up there.  
“It's not you, it's Earth,” said Shail now.  
“Yeah, right, Earth.” May snorted, then moved all her weight to one elbow so she could face him. Her bed creaked. She sighed. “What did you two fight about this week?”  
“You.” Shail sighed back, like it was a contest. “Kirtash finding Vic. Jack. The little saviors.”  
“Sounds like other stuff, not exactly Earth.” May said. “Earth would be—I don't know—you studying at college.”  
“It would be on the list if he knew…”  
If Alsan knew Shail went to college—to study Astrophysics, of all things (surely another kind of dark magic to Alsan)—, he would have taken him out of the operation. It was bad enough that Shail still kept in touch—really kept in touch—with an Earthian he didn’t trust, if Alsan’d even suspected Shail was taking precious research time to go to school … well, Shail had chosen not to think about what he would have done.  
He looked sideways at her; he was still lying on his back, but this girl … this girl continued to keep her balance on her right elbow and was looking at him, exasperated.  
“It's been years, Shail,” she said. “Move on. He's like that. And besides, you happen to like him that way. Stubborn.”  
That got half a smile out of him. Sometimes it felt silly to have May remind him of how things were.  
“Too stubborn.”  
“He's a prince, isn't he?” she joked. “It's kind of expected.”  
“It's just … frustrating, to never agree on anything. We go over the grocery lists a thousand times—he crosses items off, I add them. And he refuses to call them grocery lists.” May rolled her eyes at him, then he back at her, and added: “Imagine what that's like on the battlefield?”  
“Oh yeah. You're lucky you haven't gotten killed.”  
“Don't get me started.”  
May lay back on the bed. For a while, all they could hear was each other breathe, getting lost in their own minds, and May’s mum cooking in the kitchen, a couple of rooms away.  
“So, how's Victoria doing after …?” she finally asked, her tone somewhat softer. When she joked about Alsan it was fine to be bold and not very considerate. After all, she’d spent a good chunk of those three years listening to him babble about what a despicable little idiot Alsan could be—was—, and during all that time she’d learned not to take him too seriously. But when Victoria was involved, May knew better than to smirk and roll her eyes.   
Victoria was the next thing Shail had to family on Earth. Because Alsan felt more like work, and May herself was so good at the role of best friend that calling her a sister would have never made sense. Victoria had always been different, neither the little kid he had to protect from Kirtash nor the teenager she was growing into. Sometimes she was Shail’s partner in crime in matters Alsan would never meddle into, sometimes she was just someone to get lost in Idhun with. Because she was magic, and magic only came from Idhun. That’s something May would never have: a shared origin story, the same birth place. And with Shail, that was everything—it didn’t matter how strong and inexplicable his bond with Earth was, he would always belong somewhere else, he’d always have come from somewhere else…  
“She's going home tomorrow,” Shail said. “We thought … well, it was either going back soon or staying forever.”  
“Do you think Kirtash will find her?”  
Shail shrugged.  
“I've renewed the protection spells on her house,” he said. “It's not much, but I suppose they'll do something to shield her nature if he does find her.”  
Victoria had come to Limbhad that afternoon, shaken. She’d been chased by Kirtash in the very city where she lived, where everyone had thought her safe. Alsan’s response had been to make her stay at Limbhad, where she would be safe; May knew Shail had taken that as a personal offense, because he had been in charge of keeping her safe, of deciding what to do with her.  
“It's like protecting Hogwarts against Sirius Black,” May replied. “It won't hold forever.”  
“I know. But …” he started. “Goddamn it, May, she's a kid. She deserves a life. And living permanently at Limbhad isn't what I want for her.”  
“Strange that you think she has any life outside of it,” May said, a little edgier than intended.  
“You’re siding with him?” Shail said, hurt.  
May looked at him, and she wondered if it was right to load the weight of two whole worlds on the shoulders of someone like Shail.  
“It’s only going to get harder to shield her, Shail,” she said very softly. Somewhere in the kitchen, her mum had long finished cooking. “Kirtash may not know yet that she lives there, but he knows she exists, and it’s just a matter of time before he gets tired of looking for the dragon and the unicorn and comes after her like he does with everyone else.”  
Shail shook his head.  
“Kirtash will not find her.” May searched for his hand with her own and rubbed her thumb distractedly over it. “Not on my watch. Besides, he's busy combing the Earth. That's what I'm worried about. Why is it that when someone's finally safe, someone else isn't?”  
She pressed her face against his shoulder and exhaled.  
“It's just the way it is,” she said. “Unfair.”  
“It's just that I—” his voice shifted in the middle of the sentence, it got less loud, thinner. “Well, sometimes I lose track of what we're doing here.”  
“What do you mean?” she asked in the same tone.  
“I mean I'm always here,” he said. “Or there, reading to see if there's any way to open the Door. Or combing the Earth for clues that take me nowhere. Or barely escaping Kirtash.”  
“Or arguing with Alsan.” She laughed, and she could swear he’d smiled too.  
“That's the only thing I am sure of,” he muttered.  
“It's a start.”  
“It's a lousy start.” This time, he did laugh.  
“If Lunnaris and the little dragon are ever dead or found, you will know.” May said soothingly. “Don't ask me how, because I have no idea, but I have this feeling that you'll just know.”  
He hoped to death she was right there. Because it had been three years of searching, and losing … and he wished that losing was only ever just a matter of the battlefield, but he felt like a failure with every false lead, and he felt like an idiot every time Alsan showed up in the same room he was in.  
“Any wise words for the rest of it?” he mumbled.  
She patted him on the shoulder she was lying on. She was warmer at touch than he was.  
“You're doing fine,” May said.  
“Okay.” He smiled sadly.   
“Okay, dumbass. Stop worrying, you'll get wrinkles.”  
“Is that really true?”  
“No, I don't think so.” She paused. “But just quit it, yeah?”  
Then he sat up on the mattress, and leaned to grab his stuff from the end of the bed.  
“I have to go now before Alsan kills me,” he said.  
She sat up to watch him, her golden hair messy.  
“I'd like to be present for that. Tell him I said so, maybe he'll postpone it.”  
He stared at her.  
“He'd kill me on the spot just to taunt you.”  
May got up to reach for him and pat his arm again, half-serious half-joking.  
“The most he'll do is frown,” she said lovingly, and kissed his cheek softly. “Now go. I'll see you tomorrow.”  
When she next looked, he was gone.

Alsan was getting out of the shower when Shail walked in the house. He was wrapped in a green towel that was way too small for him, but Alsan did not care, his skin was always warm to dry up the remaining drops of water, and he only ever wore the towel to be politically correct. Shail had obviously paid attention too many times if he knew all this …  
“Long day?” Alsan asked as they passed by one another, with one curt nod.  
“Always.” Shail said.  
“Anything new?”  
“No new clues, no.”   
Alsan nodded curtly, ready to move on. Shail called out to him: “Hey, are you … pissed at me or something?”  
“Why would I be pissed?”  
_I don't know, you just kind of look the part_ , Shail thought.  
“I get the feeling you still think the most sensible thing to do is to make Victoria stay,” he said instead.  
Alsan took a deep breath and looked at Shail in the eye.  
“It's dangerous for her to live alone out there, we both know that.”  
“I know. But I don't want her to be as involved as we are. I don't want to see in her eyes what I see in Jack's.”   
“She made her choice.” Alsan shrugged. “I won't meddle in that.”  
“Maybe you were right and we should.”  
“Kirtash would have to look for her in the first place to kill her. And he won't. Not unless he figures she's half-magical.” Alsan paused, rolling his eyes slightly. “We've talked about this.”  
They’d talked about it earlier in the day. They’d talked about it and had let the girl decide. It still felt like one of them had won over the other, over the safety of a twelve-year-old. Alsan knew he should feel guilty again for gambling with Victoria’s life just to be above Shail, but all he felt was the adrenaline pulsing, pushing him to say more, say it faster, make his point better.  
“Okay.” Shail blinked, a little thrown off. “Good to know we're good.”  
Perhaps to humor him, perhaps to let steam off, Alsan asked, out of nowhere:  
“How's May?”  
“Sends her regards,” Shail muttered. May was a tricky subject, an unsurmountable river between the prince and himself. She’d always stood there, and no matter how hard Alsan hatched her surface, she’d never crumble.  
“Anything new she can report?”  
“No. No strange incidents in her area.”  
Another silence followed. Each new one was worse than the last.  
“Haven't you ever thought that your involvement with her can be perilous to us?” Alsan asked.  
“In what way, Alsan?” Shail brought a hand to his temple—his head was beginning to hurt. “She's my friend. I don't bring her to missions, I don't—”  
“But she knows, doesn't she? You keep her updated.”  
The young wizard stared at Alsan for a moment.  
“There are certain tasks I believe she'll be skilled to fill in for me in the case that I die carrying them out,” he confessed, blushing. It wasn’t a truth he liked to admit, much less to Alsan, who’d tear it apart if he didn’t agree.  
“Kirtash can read minds, Shail,” Alsan said, exasperated, but too used to this to get truly angry. “If she knows, and if he finds her, it works against us.”  
“He has no way of figuring out that part of the Resistance relies on the help of an Earthian.” Shail argued.  
“How can you know?”  
Their eyes met, and they fell silent.  
“I know,” Shail said.  
“She could be a spy. Or even an escaped wizard,” Alsan kept going. “She could be anything.”   
“It just so happens she's just human,” Shail almost shouted, “and a good friend. And she is nowhere near in Kirtash's radar.” He lowered his eyes. “And I trust her.”  
“You trust her, huh? With what? Because, like I said, if the enemy captures her, if he gets close, he'll know what she does.”  
“What the hell do you have against her? She's just a girl that can't sabotage this operation even if she wants to. She can't even get here, for God's sake.”  
“For God's sake?” Alsan’s frown, Shail realized, was from amusement as well as rage. “She's stealing you away, Shail. She always has.”   
“I'm not being stolen away. There's simply a world out there I can't bring myself to ignore, unlike some.” He shot Alsan a quick glare.  
Earth had welcomed the two of them into its womb from the very moment they’d set off on Westchester (May’s home), and Alsan had always been distrustful, had always leered, always let Shail travel to Earth for whatever they needed unless there was a fight to be fought. He’d always looked down on the languages Shail struggled to learn so he could travel at ease, his communication amulet forgotten at home instead of hanging from his neck. He’d always had something rude to comment about the electrical appliances Shail had brought home after learning about them, had always said computers were evil, always renounced on modern weapons, always chosen to wear proper Idhunian attire if he travelled to the other world. The breach between Shail and Alsan was vast, threatened by their shared objective, but sometimes Shail was sure the breach dividing Alsan and Earth was wider, less walkable. May would always be a reason for that.  
“I don't like her,” Alsan said, his arms still crossed tightly over his taut shaven chest.  
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Shail said, defeated. “Bring her here so you can control what she knows and what she doesn't?”  
“No, of course not.” The single thought repulsed Alsan.  
“Then what? We can't spend our lives here, chasing daydreams. We're doing all we can. It doesn't hurt to relax from time to time.”  
“Yes, it does.” Alsan’s eyes fixated on Shail’s; the wizard looked away, uncomfortable. “Relaxing slows us down.”  
“So _I_ slow you down?” he said in low voice, hurt.  
“I didn't say that,” Alsan immediately added. “I need you.”  
“It's not me you need. Just the magic.”  
“I need you,” Alsan reaffirmed, as firmly and seriously as everything else he’d said before. That only confused Shail more.  
“Well, May's part of my life now too,” he said. “She does no harm to anything you stand for. So let her be. Please.”  
“Fine. As you wish.”  
This time, Alsan did move away, clearly done with the conversation. It did him no good to lead the Resistance side-by-side with a wizard, he’d always done that, and he wondered, for the hundredth time, why he was being so … lax? Why hadn’t he been hard as steel and pushed further? Didn’t he feel threatened by May? Didn’t he think their cause was better guarded if that girl wasn’t in on it?  
“Alsan.” Shail had touched his arm, slightly, almost afraid to do so. All these years, and they’d never had physical contact aside from the unavoidable in battle and for teleportation. Shail thought the last time he’d felt Alsan’s skin touch his own had been that first battle against Kirtash, Ashran’s envoy, all those years ago ...   
“What?” Alsan said.  
“We really are doing all that can be done.”  
The prince nodded slowly. “I'm aware.”  
“You should try and get some sleep.”  
“I can't sleep,” came Alsan’s answer.  
Shail smiled. “Me neither.”

* * *

Alsan closed the door behind him with a sigh. He subconsciously flexed his ankle; he’d broken it earlier, in China, and even though the backlash of Victoria’s healing magic had made its way through his system when she’d healed Shail, he still felt skittish leaning his full weight on the brittly mended bones.  
The girl had waited for him outside, probably awaiting a more detailed story of what had happened, but if Alsan was to be honest with himself, and he tried to be, reliving that could wait a couple of hours until the shock wore down.  
“Victoria, can I talk to you for a moment?” he told her in low voice. Shail was sleeping on the other side of the door, and though he would probably be out for a couple of days, Alsan couldn’t help but be careful just in case.  
“What's wrong?” she said, quickly glancing at Alsan’s foot, afraid she might have screwed up the healing.  
“There's somewhere I need you to take me.” Now, Alsan regretted not having at least an ounce of magic in his veins. If he did, he might be able to do this alone, and his shame and distrust would be his and his alone.  
“Okay, but—” Victoria blinked, a little taken-aback by the request at this hour, especially after a mission. “Are you sure you want to … leave him alone?”, she whispered.  
“I don't want to leave him alone. And I figure neither do you. But it's important to him,” Alsan said. “It's where we first landed on Earth; the Soul will know.”

He hadn’t been here for years, yet the street received him the same way it had all that time ago, in darkness only ever interrupted by streetlamps, and quiet. The house, too, seemed to not have aged either; the entrance was as neat and still as he remembered it. And the girl sitting on the stairs was no different; she was even holding a book as well, and reading just as intently. A wave of reticence hit Alsan.   
He walked side by side with Victoria until they were close enough and the girl noticed them. She looked up, her index finger held midpage as a bookmark.  
“Alsan?” she said, surprised.  
The prince got to the point without bothering with courtesies. He didn’t feel they were needed. He’d come down to Earth alone to carry something out, and the less words were necessary, the better.  
“Something's happened to him,” he told her in Idhunian, without even waiting for her to process the information as he added: “He's okay now, but I thought you would like to know.”  
“What? How?” May managed.  
Victoria took a small step forward, leaving her semi-hideout behind Alsan to speak:  
“A fire spell.”  
“He's fine now,” Alsan interrupted.  
“I will kill those motherfuckers …” May whispered angrily in perfect Idhunian too, more to herself than to them. Then, looked up at Alsan again, frowning. “What happened?”  
What always happens, Victoria thought, distraught.  
“We were late,” Alsan simply said.  
“I mean, how did he …?”  
“I don't know. I just came to tell you that he's fine and that he'll probably be off for a couple of days.”  
May didn’t reply for a short while. It was strange, to say the least, that Shail’s stubborn companion was here, right in front of her house, and weirder still that he’d decided the noble thing to do was keep her updated on Shail’s status. If anyone had ever asked her, May would have said the prince would never do anything to humor him as long as it involved her. Apparently, she was wrong. But would he do it again when Shail woke? Would Alsan bring more news or was she supposed to stay on Earth, waiting everything out?  
Then her eyes flashed with an idea.  
“I'm guessing here you wouldn't entertain the idea of me coming back with you, right?” she said.  
“It's not safe for us.”  
“I can't go without your assistance,” she insisted.  
“As it should be.” Alsan nodded, and gestured for Victoria to turn around so the two of them could leave, apparently considering the conversation finished. “I'll tell him you showed interest in coming to see him,” he said when they were stepping away.  
“I could help, you know?”  
Victoria looked back, biting her lip. She wasn’t sure she understood what was going on. This was Shail’s friend, if she’d heard right, but who was she? Was she from Earth? Was she a wizard? Was she a hidden part of the Resistance Victoria knew? No, she couldn’t be, Alsan’s disregard for her wouldn’t have been so sharp and clear if she was. And yet —it felt like she knew.   
“Thank you, but we're fine,” Alsan said.  
They were walking too far now, and still Victoria saw May stand still where she was, and shout:  
“It's too heavy a burden, and you know it!”  
Alsan didn’t speak any more loudly than before, and if May ever heard his last words, Victoria couldn’t tell.  
“You'd only make it heavier,” Alsan put an arm on her shoulder, and she knew what she had to do.

  
“Do you want me to stay?” Victoria said when they opened their eyes to the soft Limbhad night. She looked Alsan in the eye but said nothing about the strange encounter, for which he was grateful. It already was bad enough he’d mixed her up in this, however distantly.  
“No, it's okay. You should go see Jack; if he's awake, he's probably wondering what all this noise was about.”  
She nodded, feeling exhaustion pile up on her. She’d done a tremendously energy-consuming healing spell in the past hour, and to top that, she wasn’t really used to staying up so late.  
“Are you sure you don't need company?” she asked.  
Alsan smiled curtly. “I'm sure.”  
“I can pass by later.”  
“I thought you had school.”  
She did, but as tired as she was, she could also read Alsan’s tiredness in his stance, and … she didn’t want him to feel he was alone in this, no matter how strained things might be these days.  
“I can skip it,” she said, “my grandma won't find out.”  
Alsan felt gratefulness flood over him, but duty was a stronger part of him, too well-trained to not come up. He patted her arm and tried to smile again.  
“Get some sleep. Jack and I'll manage.”  
She was about to bid him goodnight and leave when she remembered something and turned to face Alsan.  
“Don't be too harsh on Jack tomorrow, will you?” she said softly.  
That did make Alsan’s lips curve in a smirk.  
“Harsh? Since when am I harsh?”  
“I heard you talk to that girl,” Victoria said. “You're harsh when there's something you can't put your finger on.”  
He exhaled. He certainly couldn’t put his finger on this.  
“Sometimes I get the feeling that she's changing things,” he admitted in low voice.  
“She's from Earth, isn't she?”  
He didn’t need to nod or reply with a yes; if Alsan had known of the existence of another Idhunian, runaway or not, on their side, he would have welcomed them to Limbhad a long time ago, and by the looks of it, May had been around for long.  
Alsan sighed.   
“Victoria,” he said, “if I asked you whether Shail is going to stay on Earth after we're done here, what would you say?”  
“I thought you two wanted to go back home, that this was just temporary.”  
He let out a nervous laugh, still in low voice, not wanting to wake anybody with the idle—or perhaps not so idle—chitchat.  
“Well, that girl is the reason I believe he might stay,” he said, sounding more defeated than he intended.  
“You don't think …?”  
“That he's in love? Who knows? Wizards are naturally dreamy.” He smiled a little, passing a hand over his neck. Victoria smiled back; to some extent, she had to agree that Shail was dreamy. “And he's got you. And he loves the planet,” Alsan continued. “It's not too farfetched to think he might be done with Idhún.”

* * *

“I'm not done,” said Shail.  
The door closed behind Alsan when he entered. It was dark enough that all he saw was the outline of Shail's body on the bed, and, as his eyes adjusted, the rows of shelves and the posters on the walls. It was like being pulled into orbit, swallowed into Earth.  
“With Idhún,” Shail kept saying. “I still wanna go back.”  
“You were supposed to be sleeping,” Alsan said, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. He stood there, leaning on the door, like he'd been born just to do that, to stand his ground and look as firm and reassured as he did, even when he felt nowhere near as that. His brain was hardwired for it.  
“I told you,” Shail said. “I can't sleep.”  
Because he knew what he'd find if he closed his eyes. Death. Mockery. Defeat. Six stars aligned. Two races dying. He preferred to keep them open to a world where what he saw didn't set him off.  
“Are you in love with her?” Alsan finally said, after some seconds of silence. “With the girl?”  
“No,” he said it as gently as he could, but ‘no’s are always too tricky to ever be gentle, and that was a question they both knew had been in the air for quite long, although neither had dared address it before. Shail was lowkey startled that it had been Alsan the first to.  
“I thought—” Alsan stammered. He hadn't wanted to say that. But it was out of his mouth too fast, and those two little words that formed an unfinished sentence were enough to realize what the whole phrase would have been like. He sat down on a chair by the bed, feeling his cheeks slowly turn into red, thankful for the dimness.  
“I know what you thought.” Shail soothed him, and sat up slowly. He lowered his voice a little bit next, because he didn't think neither of them were up for this kind of conversation, for honesty. Alsan liked straight-forwardness—usually—but not honesty; honesty felt like a time-bomb to him, like he was meant to tell another truth in return, and then he just acted like he hadn't heard anything in the first place. But Shail needed this out of his system, he needed it to stop yammering against his ribcage every time he thought about fighting Alsan. “Is this what all of these years have been about? You being jealous?”  
Alsan did not hesitate.  
“I'm not jealous.”  
“What is it, then? Are you scared?”  
“Aren't you?” he replied.  
“I'm scared of some things,” Shail admitted, “but not of this.”  
“Well, you almost died—”  
“I'm not scared of that now—I'll probably be in a few hours, but that's not what I meant. I meant… failing.”  
“We will not fail,” Alsan said it confidently. He wore confidence. He was confidence. And yet—there was something about the strength in his voice when he said it that suggested differently.  
“Or we will. And everything we've done, everything we've stood for, will die with us.”  
“That's not an unusual fear, Shail.”  
“For heroes, maybe. And I'm not one.”  
Alsan kept quiet for what felt like the longest time. Talking about heroes with Shail always ended up in that single phrase, in those ‘I am not one’ that Alsan never knew how to turn around, because he didn't know himself what made heroes that. But it had been three years of those conversations about loads too big for their shoulders, and somewhere in between, he'd finally found an answer he liked.  
“I disagree,” he said quietly.  
And talking to Shail about heroes always ended up in silence, in which Alsan was sure his friend got lost thinking of examples. Of people who he considered heroic, of reasons why he wasn't like them. Alsan knew he was in the list. He knew Shail looked at him and saw an impenetrable wall who'd been trained to stay impenetrable, and who had succeeded.  
“What are you scared of?” Shail asked.  
“You'll figure it out.” Alsan smiled. “Just like you do with everything else.”  
“I know there's not much that scares you. But that's not enough to narrow it down.”  
Alsan looked at Shail. And Shail looked at Alsan. And neither knew what the other was doing, all they heard was the other breathe, and the air grow thin, and the room grow smaller, cozier even, when Shail gulped down all the other questions he was itching to ask, and actually narrowed it down to the one possibility he hadn't counted on:  
“Are you really afraid of being in love with me?”

_Was_ Alsan in love with Shail?  
Was it something that happened like that? When you weren't looking, or when you were too caught up in anything else to notice?  
And if he was, when had it happened? And why?  
Back in Vanissar, or even in Nurgon, there had been lines of people he might have grown to find attractive. Courtesans, servants, a pretty baker with flour on their cheek and dress, descendants of important people. They'd been there, living side-by-side with the castle where he did most of his own living, and he'd known they were there for him. But swords had always taken all his time and pleasure, and flirting with perfect strangers was not often on his mind. Then he'd found his little dragon and all that had ended abruptly, like things usually end.  
And then there'd been the not knowing. The struggling to survive in a place that reeked of wilderness. Fighting Kirtash and getting out his encounters alive. Fighting Kirtash and trying to keep him from outrunning them. Fighting so he didn't forget how to fight. Fighting Shail when there was no one else around to fight.  
The world that had previously revolved around him had suddenly halted, and the only person that had been there after had been a fifteen-year-old with a unicorn crush.  
They argued. They talked, mostly of home, of what they would do after they'd succeeded in finding Lunnaris and the little dragon. They argued about everything else. About why May was still giving them food every night. About why they kept being late.  
And eventually, that kid stuff became daily stuff. And neither of them were kids anymore. Alsan wasn't sure he had ever been.  
And now, after all the fighting and the surviving and the stitching things back together, Shail asked this, and Alsan, who should have had no idea of what to say, had an answer. And a story to back it up. And apologies he'd once frozen up with pretending the arguments hadn't even happened.  
“Not afraid,” he finally said, and he smiled, because it was so stupid and so true. “Terrified.”  
“Me, too,” said Shail. “It's fucking up my stomach.”  
They both grinned.  
“That might have been the fire,” Alsan said.  
“It was not the fire, Alsan of Vanissar. I can differentiate between a burn and a crush.”  
It felt like the end of a conversation thirteen-year-old Alsan would have had with someone on Nurgon after lights-out. It felt too fluffy for him to be talking about it. And just as powerful as carrying a sword. The rush wasn't very different, just lighter on the hands and heavier on the inside.  
“Are you? Scared of being in love with me?” he asked when sleep seemed to have swallowed them both.  
Shail's bed creaked.  
“Scared of having to put up with you indefinitely and way more closely than ever? Scared that it'd been you and not me out there? Scared that we'll never get the hang of it?” Shail asked. Then he smiled—Alsan could swear he'd heard him smile—and exhaled without a hurry in the world. “Absolutely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May’s a sort of omnibus original character, I’ve used her in several fics and original stuff for commodity, at least appearance-wise—but she literally could’ve been anybody. To me, she’s always been the reason Shail knows as much as he does, because even if he was curious as hell, he could’ve never learned from scratch on his own, he must’ve needed a push, a way into this new world he was discovering


	4. Chapter 4

“Where are you going?” Shail asked, his eyelids heavy from sleep.

Alsan stood midway across the cracked door, one foot inside his pants and the other out. He turned his head to the bed, his hair a little messy on the top, and lay all his weight on the recently mended foot. It snapped broken again, and Alsan couldn’t help but mutter a very distinctly under his breath: “Fuck.”

Shail roused a little from the bundle of sheets. “What’s wrong?”

Alsan finished putting his clothes on, ignoring the pain, and managed a meek: “Nothing.”

The wizard lifted an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

He sighed and sat on the bed, his hair even a bigger mess than Alsan’s.

“C’mere,” he said, “let me have a look at it.”

A little reluctantly, Alsan hopped all the way to the bed like an injured puppy, and looked at Shail like he only would this early in the morning.

“D’you have this last night?” Shail asked.

Alsan nodded.

“You carried me on a sprained ankle?”

“How do you know?”

“Victoria had just done a major spell, she wouldn’t have had the magical energy to levitate me.”

“I wasn’t about to leave you alone in the middle of the forest,” Alsan objected. _Not when you’d almost died_ , he thought.

“I know. Shut up. I’ll heal it.”

“Only if you promise to go to sleep after. Victoria said you need to rest.”

“I’m fine… Never been better.” 

* * *

 

Victoria had twenty-five minutes to kill before she had to be in class. She’d barely slept, shaken by the past night’s events. She’d felt movement in the house a little after she’d gone to bed; Alsan left for Jack’s room right after she did, and had spent the night in Shail’s.

She opened the door to check how he was doing, and see if Alsan needed her to take over watch duty, but she found both men lying in bed, soundly asleep, and decided to not wake them. It would do them good to rest a little. She probably would do the same after school.

She wished she could stay, though. She didn’t trust her magic enough as to believe nothing wrong could happen. What if it drained and Shail’s burns scarred his skin again? What if she wasn’t there to try and help?

But Alsan, though gentle, had been adamant about her getting to school in the morning, no matter how many hours of sleep she’d had. She knew everybody wanted her to have a normal life, a life where she was allowed to live carefree, and she’d long stopped contradicting them—she’d never be normal, not with healing powers in a planet with no magic and a killer after her.

Now, Madrid waited for her, not caring in the slightest whether she came from Idhún or the farthest corners of the Earth. The only thing Madrid required of her was her presence. It would never even ask her to pay attention to things as tiny as lessons, not when she had a friend recovering from a wound and two friends facing opposite walls, angry at each other and resented and not doing anything to change that. 

* * *

 

She wasn’t entirely right, of course. Alsan might have hoarded anger and resentment in him, but he didn’t let it transpire. It might have been the night’s effects on him.

He’d waken up in a better mood than he’d expected. When he’d showered and eaten something, he went down to the training room, not expecting to see Jack there, sword already in hand, ready for combat and hoping to win this time.

The exercise was good, but the disappointment left him with a bitter taste.

Jack’s fighting was proficient, for someone who four months ago couldn’t hold a sword, but he was still dominated by impulses Nurgon would have beaten out of him in a fortnight. He was quick to anger, to holding grudges, and acted before he thought. The recent tragedies in his life had made him constantly grumpy, on the edge, waiting for a chance to spring that might lead him to fight Kirtash.

And though Alsan could understand his thirst, he knew it was paramount that he control it, or the boy would get slaughtered. And he’d die himself before he let that happen.

If he had to beat the bad habits out of Jack to avoid that, then so be it.

It hurt him to say what he said, even though he believed it. He too had been a boy, and he too had had role models. Disappointment sometimes went two ways.

“You’re not ready,” he told him, matter-of-factly, and he left, aware that Jack’s world was crumbling.

Alsan was, in many ways, like Shail, but not in this. Where Shail was kind and patient with Victoria, Alsan was sharp and demanding with Jack, although the two relationships versed on strong bonds built on admiration and friendliness.

Alsan didn’t wait around. He hadn’t for Shail, three years ago; and he didn’t now. He led, he wasn’t used to following.

And yet, he returned to the same patters, the same places, the same people.

Today, in light of this new day, where past confessions were starting to pile heavy on him with insecurity, coming back meant starting, novelty.

He stood by the door, after a short cold shower to wash the sweat again, hovering on the doorframe, thinking of whether to go in or not, whether to drag himself into this or stay out, as was his learned behavior.

Habit should have been stronger, but curiosity and honesty won. He turned the knob, and exhaled.  

Victoria was at school, Jack was brooding somewhere, too hurt for human interaction ... This was almost private. It had been two years since he’d had ‘private’. Since the house had been so empty it hurt, and Shail leaving for sporadic visits to Earth hadn’t helped much. Back then, their friendship was based on survival, on strategy and keeping secrets as best they could. Alsan knew—or thought he knew—what Shail did when he went to see May, and Shail suspected Alsan had many unresolved feelings he’d take time to work through, and not just about the two of them. The wizard had mentioned sometimes how he thought being trained so thoroughly could have hardened Alsan past the point of normality. They’d argued over that, like they did with everything. And then they’d cooled down, like it happened every time, but they’d never reached a middle ground.

It was either too much or too little. And now there was too much going on in Alsan’s mind.

Once more in the past few hours, he was thankful for the darkness.

Shail still slept, and part of him felt relieved at that. He knew they’d have to talk, after last night. But he wasn’t sure exactly how direct that conversation would be. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to have it in the first place. Whatever came out of it would be a step back or a step further, and change was always frightening after years and one night of continuous advancement.

“You going to spend the morning there?” Shail then said, his voice mumbled from between the covers, unequivocally amused.

“Just stretching my legs. It’s been a long night.”

Alsan walked in and sat on the chair near the bed. That space between the two pieces of furniture was his motivation to word things right, to not rush in and let pride and upbringing take hold of what he wanted to say but felt he couldn’t.

“Is Victoria up?” Shail asked. He sat up on the bed. He didn’t remember many things neatly from last evening, but her face was one of them—Victoria saving him.

“She left a while ago,” Alsan said, rubbing the back of his head, his neck stiff. “She wanted to stay, but I insisted I would.”

“She must be exhausted...” He knew he was. Shail could only imagine what the girl felt like. He was forgetting, of course, that he’d been the one to suffer the wound she’d healed.

Neither said anything for a couple of minutes. Shail was sure he already knew Alsan’s breathing patterns by heart when the prince exhaled and spoke again:

“I told May.”

“What?” Shail barely muttered. He couldn’t have heard right, Alsan would’ve never—

“I told her you were hurt,” Alsan continued. “I thought you’d’ve done the same if it’d been the other way around.” He paused and licked his lips, considering if he should add more to that sentence. “I didn’t let her come here, though.”

Their eyes met in the dimness until Alsan looked away, visibly uncomfortable. A little light came in from the semi-closed door, making the back of Alsan’s head shine. He looked like a Greek god, humbled in a room too small, too earthly, too human for him. Truth was, deep down, Shail felt too human for him.

He’d always felt like he would never be enough. They were so different… Alsan was who he was because of where he’d been born, Shail was who he was because he’d been on so many roads he’d ended up finding himself. But he felt dirty in comparison, filthed beyond redemption because he wasn’t who he thought Alsan deserved.

And still, they’d had the conversation they’d had last night. And there were having this one now.

Shail sat upright with some effort, dizzy and stiff from sleep, and his left hand—used to keep his balance—also met some of the light from the door. Yes, Alsan was a prince bathed by godly light, but Shail was a wizard with a light of his own.

“Are you still jealous?” he asked in the end.

“I don’t think jealous’s the word,” Alsan said, laughing.

“You were jealous of her.”

Alsan pierced Shail’s eyes with his own.

“I thought you loved her,” he said. Clear as day. The fact that had, inadvertently to him for two years, broken his heart bit by bit.

“Can’t I?” Shail rebuked.

“You do?” his voice sounded hurt and surprised at the same time. He hadn’t imagined Shail would pop that response out. Not that one, not that one out of all the ones Alsan had been ready for.

“I love her,” Shail kept saying, not daring looking away. “Just not like that.”

Alsan breathed in. Not like that. He wondered if this was ‘like that’. He wondered what ‘like that’ was, and if he’d ever felt it. If Shail had.

“Have you ever been with anyone?” he asked the wizard after a while.

The response was immediate.

“No.” After saying it, Shail stopped to think that maybe he shouldn’t have given that information away like it was nothing. It hurt him a little to know he’d never met love face-to-face with it going both-ways.

“Neither have I,” Alsan said.

“Does that change anything?” Shail said.

Alsan shrugged.

“Not really. But this does change things. Affects our mission.”

“Everything affects the mission. Victoria changed things, Jack’s changed things ... and May changed things,” Shail said. “We’re no longer kids, we know things are different than they were when we came here. We understand more, we see better.” He sighed, then made eye contact, his voice full of emotion. “We’re close, Alsan. All these encounters ... they have to mean something.”

“That’s what I mean. We have to be ready for it.”

“So we can’t enjoy our life in the meantime? Does it really slow us down any more than sleeping and eating do?” Shail didn’t say it like he often did, coldly and reproaching. Instead, he said it softly. He was tired of fighting who he shouldn’t have to fight.

This had been subject to more than one argument over the years. Shail wanted desperately to make the most of the world in his reach. He’d graduated college, he’d travelled the continents looking for clues and looking for the exact same thing Alsan shunned: distraction. Alsan had spent three years ignoring Earth’s existence, ignoring everything but the obvious, but their mission. He’d spent years mocking—however indirectly—anything that detoured from it.

“It’ll distract us differently,” Alsan said.

“It’s been distracting us for three years.”

“But now it will keep us busy.”

“It already kept me busy,” Shail observed.

Alsan stopped for a moment, unable to do anything but silently agree. In a way, it had already been distracting them for too long. An unbearable thought crossed his mind: that maybe if they hadn’t been pining over unresolved matters between them, they would have gotten things done much faster and maybe—

“Then, fine,” Alsan said, breaking thus the pressure building in his mind over that realization he didn’t want to hold as true. He chose to look the other way for the first time. It was beautiful… “We’ll succumb. But we have to remember we’re sworn to find—”

Shail didn’t let him finish. He grabbed Alsan softly by the hem of his sleeveless shirt and pulled him close.

“My life’s my own,” he said firmly, “and I’ll do what I want with it...”

Then he kissed Alsan full in the mouth. That, too, was beautiful.

               

When Shail got out of bed, he didn’t even stop by the kitchen to grab something to eat—he went straight to Westchester, leaving a very puzzled and blushing Alsan behind on his mattress.

It was dusk in Westchester and a few remaining drops of light shone on the tiled roof of May’s house, and on the heads of the two girls sitting on the porch, talking. Once Shail moved a bit closer, but still far enough so he wouldn’t be spotted easily, he realized the other girl was Victoria.

He stopped walking, wondering how on earth Victoria had known, if he might’ve said anything, done anything to betray May—

Then, with a relieved exhale, he remembered what Alsan had told him earlier. If he’d told May, he must’ve needed Victoria to bring him along, since Shail himself wasn’t even conscious.

He did a simple invisibility spell and walked closer to hear what they were talking about.

“So he never told you about me, huh?” May was saying, half of her mouth curved upwards.

Victoria shook her head, brown locks of long hair moving in the gentle air.

“Neither of them did. I didn’t know anybody else was involved. It’s … strange. It’s always just been us.” She paused for a moment; May thought she looked like she wanted to say something else, something she’d been dying to get out. In the end, Victoria continued: “Was it always like this? Were they always onto each other?”

May laughed.

“Pretty much. I would too if I had to do what they did. It’s normal that they disagree with each other sometimes.”

“Yesterday I realized that maybe most of the time they disagreed about you,” Victoria said, carefully—especially the last part.

“Alsan doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m baggage,” May explained.

“But—you’re not actually part of the Resistance?”

“I’m not actually part of anything,” May snorted. A part of her had always been angry at that fact, but most of her understood why: she’d stand in the way if she was. “I’m Shail’s friend. You know better than anyone that he needs friends. They both do, and they’re both too goddamn stubborn to realize they are friends too.”

“They’re friends, they’re just—” Victoria suddenly recalled very vividly the image of her two friends together in bed, sleeping that long and terrifying night off.

“They’re in love, I think,” May said, looking down. She’s always known about Shail, and always suspected about Alsan—or wished it to be true, at least—, it was only coming to her clearer this time. “And they’ve been pining for years, too caught up in duty.”

“I wish they talked, but no one talks there. Jack’s pissed at Alsan, Alsan’s pissed at Shail, and I—they’re all busy being angry at each other. I don’t know what to do. It’s like they’ve forgotten about me.”

As an only child with busy parents that loved each other fiercely, sometimes to the point of taking her for granted as part of that love, May understood better than she should have. She knew Victoria was an orphan living with her adoptive grandmother somewhere in Spain, a forlorn and quiet kid who was invisible to most. May knew Shail loved her too, and did his best at filling the holes in her life, but he was barely an adult himself, he couldn’t carry the loads he tried to pretend didn’t weight on him. He tried, but he had too much on his mind, and often forgot to try and see beyond. And his own problems with Alsan had only kept him further from Victoria lately.

May took a deep breath.

“Thank you, you know?,” she said, “for saving his life. He’s too off right now to tell you himself, but he will.” Shail, invisible, very close to them, felt guilty at that. He’d wanted to say thank you to the both of them, although maybe not together. What was he doing instead? Eavesdropping. He blushed in shame, yet he kept listening.

“I didn’t think I could do it,” Victoria was saying, her face white.

“You must’ve been scared.”

Victoria looked at her shaking hands.

“If he dies, then … then nothing stands,” she said, looking for the right words to explain the oppressing hole she’d felt inside last night, when she’d had Shail’s literal life in her hands and had been so close to not being able to save it.

“You’ll have Jack and Alsan, no matter what happens,” May reassured her, although as far as she knew, it wasn’t just Shail who sometimes took the kid for granted, no matter how much he loved her. “And Shail is too damn careful to die before he’s saved Lunnaris.”

“What do you think he’ll do? After he saves her, I mean.”

“They’ll go back home, save the world. Shail feels he has to.”

“Don’t you want him to stay?” Victoria asked, taken-aback. May seemed just as close to Shail was Victoria was herself. It didn’t make sense for her to want him to go like that.

“I want him to come back. Big difference.” May sighed. “What will you do, after they save the dragon and the unicorn? Will you go with them?”

“I can’t. My grandma—she can’t know. I can’t leave. Besides, I’m not even sure I’m from Idhún. I mean, I couldn’t be.”

May smiled bitterly: “Doesn’t have to be your planet for you to go there.”

“You would go?”

“I would. I have few ties on Earth. But, honestly, I don’t think Alsan would want me in his same planet.” For some twisted reason, that made her laugh a little.

“He might grow to,” Victoria looked into May’s eyes, her expression suddenly serious. “We might need you.”

May was thankful for those words, but she wasn’t a kid—she had known the truth for many years now: she was just a human girl who would never belong. She’d never belonged on Earth, and she’d never be part of Idhún. She hadn’t even gathered the courage to ask yet.

“I’m not like you, Victoria. I’m a plain Earthian human,” May said in the end. “No magic, no origin story. The only extraordinary thing about me is that I met Shail.”

“If they find Lunnaris, she might gift you,” Victoria said, but to May it just sounded like a hopeful wish a child would make.

“Out of seven billion people?” May arched an eyebrow.

Victoria shrugged, then smiled sheepishly. “She gifted me.”

In spite of the ominous sadness that was taking over her, May couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re worth gifting,” she affirmed. She then ruffled the girl’s hair softly, and looked at her serenely. “Shail talks hell of a lot about you.”

After that, Shail disconnected. He sat on the grass near the stairs where the girls were, and listened on and off as they talked about idler things. Victoria was curious about the strange teenager she’d only just heard about, and asked May lots of questions about her life that May tried to answer as solidly as she could, making on or two questions of her own. They even talked about him again, about college. Victoria clasped a hand to her mouth when May told her. He felt guilty at that. He maybe should’ve confided in her too… He’d grown so used to hiding the part of him that just belonged on Earth, he’d never even considered the possibility that he had people in Limbhad who were just as willing to see it as May was.

When darkness fell upon Westchester and wrapped the province in its starry coat, Victoria looked at her watch and bid May goodbye, quietly disappearing in midair as the Soul took her home.

Then, and only then, Shail made himself visible again.

For some reason, May didn’t look very surprised. She waited for him to sit by her side to speak:

“You heard all that, didn’t you?”

“Not all,” he said. “Just bits.”

May eyed him. Almost scanned him with her gaze, looking for wounds, he supposed—small cracks in the foundation.

“She’s scared, Shail,” she told him softly. “She’s worried about you.”

“It was just a burn,” he said.

May shook her head, a little bit disappointed, and leaned on his shoulder. She’d missed nights like this, when they were both young and more careless than now.

“I don’t mean the burn,” she said in low voice.

No, of course she didn’t…

               

 

He was back home soon, with some groceries he’d stopped to buy in his way, and had headed straight to the kitchen to put everything in the right cupboard. He found Victoria there in spite of the hour, sitting among worrying piles of books written in Spanish that he didn’t understand. Since the house these days was either a nest for arguments or dull silence, it wasn’t strange to find her there, fleeing all that.

“Hey, are you busy?” he said. It was a rhetorical questions, of course. She was busy.

“No, no,” she said, quickly putting some of the books aside. “Just doing homework.”

“Want some company?” he smiled broadly. Victoria had missed that smile lately. His nose was either too buried in his work or too buried in Alsan’s neck, for good or bad.

She smiled back and pushed a stool his way so he’d sit. “Why not?”

He took the seat, thankful. Now, he only had to find the right way to word this. Everything was spiraling in his head since Jack had come along. Since the first day, really. Alsan, May, Victoria, Jack… all pieces of a puzzle he was far from completing or even beginning to understand.

But he’d used to understand, her at least. He’d bonded with her, told her things he couldn’t tell either Alsan or May. He’d just been a little more tired and busier later, that was all. He just had to focus.

“Thank you for last night,” he finally said.

Victoria looked at him for a long time, trying to decipher the meaning of that. She knew what he meant, but she wasn’t sure what he felt about it.

"There’s nothing to thank me for,” she muttered, looking away, suddenly unable to hold his gaze.

Shail moved his stool a little closer and held her hand.

“You saved my life—” he started.

“Barely.”

“That’s not what Alsan told me.”

Now she did look at him, pierced him with those intense bright eyes.

“You don’t remember?” she said.

He gulped, then recomposed himself.

“I remember blacking out with a hole through my stomach. When I woke up last night, you’d healed me.” He squeezed her hand. “You saved my life.”

The girl smiled and shrugged.

“You couldn’t die,” she simply said.

Shail’s heart wrinkled like a raisin when he remembered the conversation he’d overheard back in Westchester. If he dies… then nothing stands.            

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

 

Once Victoria had gone to sleep—it was way past midnight in Madrid—, Shail thought he’d do the same. He wasn’t really bone-deep tired. He never was, truth be told. The first few weeks, when he still knew very little about the world Limbhad floated over, he’d been exhausted, on edge. But now it had been three years of waking up like that, and his body was used to the constant strains of this life. He’d already been scrawny as a kid, and existing on stress and caffeine for so long had ended up turning him into a scrawny adult in fact if not in truth.

He undid the buttons on his shirt with his mind drifting off somewhere else—somewheres else—and got out of his jeans, tossing the bundle of clothes away to a corner of his bed, stretching to reach under his pillows to grab his PJs.

It had been hell of a couple of days. They still didn’t feel real. If they’d really happened, firstly, how the fuck could he still be alive? Secondly, what was Alsan doing? And thirdly, why did he feel like a class-A asshole?

He’d almost been burned to a crisp, and surviving it now entitled him to make-out sessions and ignoring everything else? He smiled a little; his mum would’ve probably screamed his head off about it. His master, back at the tower, would’ve taken a much more wizardly approach. Shail, now, felt neither would really help. He wanted the honest-to-god, rough and straight-forward of a friend, but he’d already had that.

He lay down on the bed, not bothering to get under the covers, and looked at the ceiling with a sigh.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asked himself in a mutter, barely moving his lips.

That very morning he’d felt so ready to face the world with Alsan. He’d wanted to devour the world, to show it he still had aces to play, things to do, experiences to exhaust until the very last breath. Yet the day had deflated his spirits bit by bit—conversation by conversation.

Someone knocked on the door, softly. Shail thought it might be Victoria. Maybe, he thought, she couldn’t sleep again and needed a spell to help her. Or, he thought as he smiled, she just needed someone to talk to, to reassure her all was fine. For now…

But it was Alsan who opened the door, barely enough to peek in, his brown hair slightly ruffled, from training, perhaps. Alsan had two moods: training and brooding. And a third, brooding training.

“You sleeping?” he said. Shail was surprised at how slangy that sounded. Alsan was normally very prince-like.

He shook his head from the bed. “Nope.”

“Where have you been?” Alsan said, then added, softly: “Working?”

“Tying loose ends, I suppose. You?”

“Disappointing thirteen-year-olds.”

Alsan lay down next to Shail.

“You ever feel bad about disappointing him?” Shail asked.

Alsan hesitated for a moment.

“I can’t let him see me as a friend when we’re training.”

“He looks at you like you’re his entire world.”

Alsan actually smiled. “That makes two of you.” He paused to think and change the subject. “He’s a good kid, and he works hard. He just—I’m scared that impulsiveness of his will get him killed one day. If the circumstances were different, then maybe…” he drifted off.

“Has he asked for a legendary weapon yet?”

Alsan nodded. “He’s not ready.”

“And when he is?”

“One of the daggers that we don’t use. He can have a sword too, just not legendary. Domivat would burn him alive. And the other…” The prince sighed. “In any case, he’s not ready.”

They didn’t say anything else for a long while. Alsan actually thought Shail had fallen asleep when he felt his fingers on the inside of his arms, tracing long and slow lines on his skin, absent-mindedly.

“So,” Alsan mumbled, “where did we leave off earlier?”

“I kissed you,” Shail said. “And I think you were almost kissing me back.”

Alsan smiled, and upped himself on one elbow. “Yeah, that…”

He leaned in and brushed lips with Shail.

“I’m actually kissing you back now, aren’t I?” he said, laughing softly. Alsan couldn’t believe his own words, his own feelings expanding, and that unshakeable smile he couldn’t get off his face. If he kissed Shail for a thousand days, then, and only then, maybe that smile would wear off. Or get bigger and bigger. “It’s so much easier like this.”

“Like this?” Shail asked, very close to Alsan’s mouth.

“My life’s only my own when duty’s a distant call in the wind…”

Shail stared deep into Alsan’s brown eyes. “Your life’s always your own,” he said, serious. “You always have a choice.”

Limbhad chose that very instant, right as Shail’s hand travelled up Alsan’s clothed chest, to undulate. Both wizard and prince froze on the spot. Then, when they recovered some sense, Alsan stood fast as lightning and was practically out of the door when Shail fully comprehended what that meant.

They caught up at the entrance of the library, and Alsan ran in towards an unconscious Jack on the floor, the Soul’s spiraling sphere still connected on the table.

“Damn it, kid,” he muttered between his teeth as he shook Jack, trying to be gentle and failing.

Shail knelt by the two of them. “He’s fine, Alsan. Just let him come to.”

“He’s not fine,” Alsan said to himself.

Then Jack’s eyes began to open, very very slowly, exasperating the prince. He opted for the direct, harsh approach, and started shouting to the boy, not truly caring much if he was awake enough to hear him.            

“What were you thinking? You’ve gone completely crazy!”

Once the kid rose, and Alsan had told him off in his honest but brutal way, and Shail had tried to ease the blows, even if that sort of put him against Alsan again, Jack left the library, his head hanging low. The Soul had ceased to twirl in the sphere, and Shail already knew all he needed to breathe easy for a while.

“Limbhad’s still safe.”

“For now. Who knows if he’ll go back…” Alsan grunted.

“He won’t. Give him a chance.”

“I do. That’s all I do. I give him chances all day.”

“No, you don’t,” Shail laughed softly. “You only get frustrated that he’s not living up to your expectations. I understand why, but he doesn’t. He was born on Earth,” he reminded Alsan, whose face crumpled up in a funny grimace.

“I hate it when you’re right,” he said grumpily.

“You must hate me often, then.” Shail smiled.

“Shut up.”

“Go and talk to him. He needs you.” Shail paused, blushing. “Like I used to need you time ago.”

Alsan eyed him worryingly.

“I wasn’t there for you much, was I?”

“Occasionally. Go be there for him now.”

“Okay. You go back to sleep,” Alsan said, an implicit unsung promise trailing off his words.

               

There was no moon in Limbhad’s sky—there were no moons. If one meant to find solace and understanding in the universe, the constellations would have to do. Alsan didn’t know them. He knew the ones at home, shaped like the ancient heroes of his land, stellar reminders of dragons and better, brighter times. How could these stars mean so little to him? Weren’t they stars as well? Wouldn’t they have served their purpose if he’d just tried?

Shail did know these skies. He could be stranded in the middle of a desert or a jungle and he’d find his way by looking up, although Alsan suspected that it was virtually impossible to get him lost anywhere by now. Time ago, if Shail had tried to get Alsan involved in matters of the planet below them, he’d turned a deaf ear. Now, he wanted to listen, and not precisely because he cared about stars. He wanted to find a way out of himself as badly as Shail wanted in.

Today—or tonight, technically—Alsan had risen early, hoping to find the comfort he privately needed in prayer to his gods, and take the opportunity to scrub the floors of the temple. He’d grabbed a mop and some cloths and water, and had left the main building through the small path between houses. The temple room was a privilege—Limbhad had been built during times in which Idhún feared and despised magic, forcing wizards to go into mass exile. On their descent to Earth, they had found Limbhad and built a small heaven there stone by stone. These were wizards who had barely escaped the hands of the Churches, and yet in creating their own space had also included a temple of faith. Alsan could not understand how these wizards hadn’t been so consumed with hate they’d banned everything related to religion. Yet Alsan himself, educated on reluctance towards magic, was now living, working with, and in love with a wizard.

Lost in his own thoughts, Alsan didn’t see Shail until he was literally in front of him, grinning and most likely returning from one of his strolls through the woods.

“Up so early?” Shail said as greeting.

“Jack’s still sleeping,” Alsan said, “and he’ll want to spar a little when he wakes. I need to do some things before that.” He paused, arching an eyebrow, ever the accurate observer. “You’re up early too.”

“I’m up late,” Shail said, laughing. Alsan could still see the fifteen-year-old he’d met years ago in the man in front of him. The wizard noticed the mop in Alsan’s hands. “Want some help with that? It’s been a while since we cleaned the temple.”

Alsan conceded. “We’ll get it done faster.”

It hadn’t been his intention to amble around the images of the six gods and goddesses, but they did. Alsan halted almost imperceptibly in front of a statue of Irial, the goddess of light, creator and patron of the human race, and nodded slightly.

He grabbed the mop from a corner of the room and passed it over to Shail, already getting away to work on the cleaning. Their hands touched. Their hands had touched a lot lately, more often than not they were holding them together, or patting them together. This togetherness didn’t usually leap into bigger rooms than their own when the kids would see. The kids had seen, but it was still too soon for everything.

But their hands had touched, and neither moved them away. They just stared at each other, gazes trembling a little, and Alsan leaned in first.

The mop dropped to the floor.

At first they just kissed, as was their signature move now. Soft kisses that gave way to slower, deeper ones. They were melting iron and steel away, thus bringing the walls between them to the very ground they stood in. They breathed into the other’s mouth and they crossed more borders than in interdimensional travel.

Alsan suddenly froze. He only had some nights lying in bed, barely even beginning to kiss, barely even beginning to do anything; he only had those fuzzy nights to compare everything to. As far as he knew, kissing when one was standing up was completely different.

Still, he liked the thrill of not being in control, although in his core he was scared to bits. He wasn’t leading for the first time in his life, but he still rocked with the ship, being swayed by a vast and powerful sea. He could almost feel the magic in the tip of Shail’s tongue, just like Shail could feel the molten metal stirring in Alsan’s chest, even through the thick layer of leather covering it.

His hands on him, slowly ridding him of his top, brought Alsan back to the beginning—to the fighting, now turned into something very different; to rougher touches.

“I still think the temple could use some light,” Shail had said, for the hundredth time. He wasn’t arguing necessarily, he just wanted to make his point until Alsan conceded, which he didn’t do very often, still set in his ways. Alsan would have lived in permanent darkness if given a choice.

Alsan had shaken his head, his arms crossed, almost an armor over his body. “Nothing from Earth will tarnish the temple.”

He had said it, allowing no reply or argument to revoke his words, but Shail was persistent.

“I don’t see what the harm is,” he’d said, shrugging.

“I don’t want you contaminating the gods’ place with your Earthian shenanigans. Inside the house,” Alsan said it in a settling tone, “do as you like, but the temple stays bare.”

Bare…

His leather chest plate lay on the floor, Shail’s deft fingers tracing soft lines on his smooth skin…

Alsan pulled Shail closer, kissing him again and again, his hands on the back of his neck, their bodies pressed together.

Bare.

 

A couple of days later, Alsan had the biggest surprise of his life as a knight. For years, ever since his early training, he’d stood undefeated among his peers and later among his masters. He’d been a machine of pure muscle, strategy, and quick thinking. Somehow, he’d always longed for the perfect opponent, the one who would not only defeat him but also teach him through the defeat. He’d trained legions of soldiers, fresh meat to Nurgon, and not one of them had been worthy enough to beat Alsan of Vanissar in single combat. Then Kirtash had cut through his skin in a matter of minutes, and defeat had no longer been a prize to be obtained and cherished but a product of fighting, and a result of fighting to stay alive.

Today, though, Alsan left the training room with a full smile on his face. Defeat tasted like novelty and excitement, like an unsung promise of a different nature. He’d had Jack’s sword in his neck for the first time in months, and for the first time, Alsan knew the pride of being a role model in his own skin instead of dreaming of the day when he’d feel like one. Both him and Jack had played it cool, but neither subscribed to coolness as soon as they left each other’s presence. In Jack’s case, having learned the hard lessons Alsan had been trying to get into his thick head, he accepted his victory and didn’t feel like he had the upper hand at all like he would have expected. In Alsan’s case, pride still flooded him, and did so even a while later, already showered and dressed in more comfortable clothes, when he told Shail about it on their way out of the kitchen. Even after they’d eaten, even after they’d hidden away in Shail’s bedroom, pride run through Alsan’s veins.

Today was a good day.

 

“I think we should visit the library, don’t you?” Shail heard Jack saying, his voice conveying a certain finality to it, a gravitage most likely owed to his new victory over Alsan.

“And what you exactly expect to find there?” Victoria asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ll find out,” the boy said.

“Find what out?” Shail said, behind them, his hair still ruffled. He’d left Alsan for a bit to go drink something.

Jack and Victoria explained everything to him with glistering eyes. The other day, when Jack had used the Soul to spy on the enemy, he’d heard a weird conversation between Kirtash and Elrion, and with Victoria’s help he’d decoded where they’d been discussing. Jack and Victoria thought Kirtash was looking for a book written in Idhunian in the British Library—or had been, a couple of days ago.

 Maybe to the two of them it wasn’t obvious, but Shail’s mind was already exploring an entire world of possibilities which were spreading in front of him. If Kirtash was looking for it, then it must be a lead. Lunnaris, he only thought. That simple word, and the little unicorn attached to it, gave him strength when everything else failed to.

“Well, let’s not panic,” Shail finally said, mostly to himself. “I’m going to tell Alsan. You have to go into detail.” (LR)

When Alsan came down, his hair a little out of place, and they explained it all again, even more excited than last time, Victoria displayed a page of the book online, and Shail and her fought for dominance over the mouse.

It was the Book of the Third Age. And if Kirtash was already looking for it, those were not good news.

 

Alsan stood as tall as he was, encased in the unbuttoned dark jeans and a beige t-shirt Shail had gotten him, in the middle of Shail’s room. Among all the posters and maps and books, Alsan shouldn’t really have felt out of place, yet he felt too black-and-white for the colorful brilliance of the bedroom.

“You want me to what, again?” he said, unsure.

“Just for a while.” It was hard for Shail to contain his giggles.

“I don’t see why I need to,” Alsan said, looking down at his taut calves. “You can make me invisible.”

Giggles slowly giving way to something else entirely, Shail leaned on a wall, looking at Alsan with a grin as vast as the universe on his face.

“And what a waste of magic that would be,” he mused. “Will you turn around?”

Alsan did, a little sheepishly, and stared at Shail, awaiting. The wizard stepped closer, thoughtful. He was trying really hard to be objective about the outfit, but it was hard when all he saw was Alsan.

“You need to actually…zip that up,” he said, serious, pointing at Alsan’s unbuttoned jeans.

Those tight jeans did look great on the Idhunian prince.

               

“Come on, come on,” Alsan was saying loudly, given that both Victoria and Jack weren’t ready yet. “We need to get going.”

Shail took the opportunity, since Alsan was busy being, well, Alsan, to fish out his phone in a moment when he knew no one would object, and text May. The idea of going out to Earth with company, not just him, made him happy and distracted him from the fear of screwing up.

British Library, there we go, he sent.

Alsan too?   Was her quick reply.

Trying not to get caught, Shail leveled his phone a little and sent her a stolen picture of Alsan, who stood in the middle of the hall, his arms crossed in impatience, and his brow wrinkled.

_Cute!!!_ , she texted. _Tell him I say hi_.

Smiling, Shail moved closer to Alsan and held one of his hands hostage so he couldn’t cross his arms anymore. “May says hi.”

Alsan turned a little to look at him in the eye.

“Is she coming?”

Shail looked surprised.

“It’s her world.” He shrugged. “If we’re bringing THESE TWO UNPUNCTUAL PEOPLE to the mission,” Alsan said, “why not her?”

Shail didn’t have the courage to tell him that May would be just as lost as him in London. Instead, he replied to her text: Wanna come with us? Promise I’ll let you speak British

_Ha ha ha_ , came was reply.

Then, two seconds later, _well, come pick me up, I don’t have all day!!_

               

 

Victoria and Jack entered the Hall of the British Library and vanished behind heavy wooden doors, May tagging along. She shot one look at Shail before she vanished too. Her eyes were encouraging.

Alsan caught her looking, and Shail caught him.

The wizard lifted a finger before Alsan opened his mouth. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You almost do, though.”

Alsan crossed his arms and frowned.

“So you know what I’m thinking now? Is that it?”

“I’m just saying—she’s a good asset. She’s a good asset today.”

With a noncommittal head gesture, Alsan grabbed Shail’s arm to pull him inside.

“Come on. Time is wasting,” he said.

Shail, nevertheless, smiled. “You can’t get in like that, they’ll see you.”

“And that’s funny because?”

The ‘because’ hung in midair for some seconds.

“You look nice in those clothes,” Shail finally admitted in a petty voice.

Alsan didn’t want to follow the joke. With a firmness in his gaze most men only dreamed of having, he stared at Shail cleanly.

“I look like you,” he said, and Shail almost melted right there—for Alsan, that was almost a love confession. And for Shail it was even better than such.

“A slightly taller version of me.”

Alsan rolled his eyes at him.

“Come on, Shail. We have work to do.”

“I can do as quick scan.”

Alsan lifted an eyebrow at him. “Do a full scan.”

“Go upstairs. I’ll stay here for a while.”

“Okay,” he said with a curt nod. “I’ll meet you around.”

               

Alsan didn’t do things halfway, or softly. Invisible as he was, he was not ethereal, and his thumping feet on the office floors was the first sign of it. He didn’t slither through corridors and rooms, he rather barged in, looked and fished around, and was on his way before anyone could tell what the noises were coming from.

He covered several floors in this fashion, methodical and to the point, and yet ran into no conversations, managed to get no information, and found nothing, except for the restrooms.

He exited them quietly—the first time he did anything quietly—, tucking his t-shirt under his jeans, and turned the corner only to almost knock Shail over.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” the wizard said, regaining his balance by holding on to Alsan’s arm. He didn’t seem angry, Alsan thought, since he was close to laughter. “Anything?”

Alsan shook his head. “Maybe we’re on the wrong floor.”

“I don’t think so,” he pointed at the billboard near the restrooms that read Department Of Rare Books, but Alsan couldn’t read English anyway. “Should we maybe take a look at the computer rooms, just in case?”

The prince shrugged. His knowledge of computers was very much limited. He’d come in contact with much more surprising and horrific machines already, but computers still dazzled him and he wanted no part in anything related to them.

“If no one’s talking about the book, or has it around,” he said, “I doubt there’ll be anything on a computer. Will it take long to find out?”

Shail shook his head, grinning. “Not with me in charge.”

               

Alsan didn’t do things softly. He opened the door to the room Shail had told him was where they kept the computers, and the wizard stood still for a moment, open-mouthed, at the sheer brute force applied only to crack a door open. Both their bodies froze, invisible or not, when a dozen pale heads turned to the door, frowning. A red-haired man in his twenties stood up impatiently and closed the door again, muttering under his breath:

“Fucking doors… With the budget these people have, ’least they could do is fix stuff…” he was saying as he sat back down on the computer.

Shail and Alsan hobbled around him as quietly as they could. When Alsan’s shoes creaked, Shail glared at him, and Alsan practically buffed, but the man at the computer was too preoccupied with something else to notice.

A bulkier dude with stubble and a cup of coffee permanently attached to his hand had as close as yelled that it made no difference:

“The fuck deleted the new manuscript forty-fucking-times????” he’d said.

With the patient sigh of someone used to the yelling, the ginger young man moved his chair closer.

“Come on, Kyle. Must be a malfunction,” he said, taking hold of Kyle’s computer. “Let me see.”

Kyle was getting red in the face. “It’s not a goddamn malfunction. You think these computers freeze?”

“Mine does.” The boy shrugged.

But Kyle was already typing on his keyboard, and then pointing frantically at the screen.

“See? Recent deletions—45 times. Another 45 in the bin. Who the fuck did this?”

The boy didn’t really know what to tell him. And Shail would have paid money to be able to come out of invisibility and help out; he could think of a couple of things to recover the files, but Alsan was staring at him, urging him to shut off that mental process.

“You checked the drives for copies?” intervened a woman on the opposite row of computers.

“Of course I’ve checked the drives for copies!” Kyle shouted. “There’s nothing left.”

“Maybe they’ll have the book up in another department,” said the red-haired boy.

“Then go ask them,” Kyle said, and returned to the screen, trying to find a way around the problem as he muttered: “I swear to god, of all days—”

“’Kay, kay.”

As the boy left his stall, Alsan and Shail had to move aside so they couldn’t be caught. Practically laughing, Shail leaned in over Kyle. It didn’t look good.

They waited there, amidst Kyle’s mutterings, until the boy returned, his face ashen.

“So? What did the boss say?” Kyle asked the minute he entered the room, without even turning.

The boy gulped. “Julia isn’t sure what’s going on. She says they’ve lost that too. She was counting on our digital manuscript.”

“Great. Fucking great,” Kyle mumbled under his breath.

“Wasn’t there a dude who said he can translate it?” said the same girl as before. “There’s a postit here.” She raised it over the computer lines. There was a name written on it with slapdash handwriting. Shail moved over there to see what it was, as Alsan stayed back, afraid to be discovered but still not managing to be gentle with how much noise he made when shifting posture or leaning on a chair. “He might have some copies with him.”

Shail looked at Alsan and mouthed the name at him, but Alsan didn’t get it.

After a short while pondering, Kyle rubbed at his forehead and said:

“Check it. At this point, that’s all I can work with right now. They’re gonna kill us if we don’t find that goddamn book. Julia’s gonna murder us. Who the fuck put me up to working here anyway? Too much stress…”

The red-haired boy set to it, quickly and efficiently typing the information on the postit. Soon, he looked up. “Name’s Parrell, Peter.”

“Did he leave a number we can call?”

“Nope, but I’ll send him a mail.” Fast as lightning, the boy did. “That’s weird, went straight to mail delivery failure.”

“Call him!” Kyle bellowed.

The boy did. “Says his phone’s disconnected.”

“FUCK.”

Muffling his chuckles, Shail opened the door just enough so him and Alsan could go through, undetected. Alsan slammed it closed on the way out, and they both could hear Kyle scream again something about the doors.

They walked alongside the corridor until they were at the restrooms again. The area was clear, and although someone might hear them talk, no one would really see where the voices were coming from. Even so, they didn’t hide in a stall—it’d be too crammed.

“We need to find that man,” Alsan said.

“You saw them try,” Shail said. “If those guys haven’t found him, I’m not sure we can. No phone number, no mail address, just the name—Peter Parrell.”

“Are you telling me it’s undoable?” Alsan said, his face stern.

“I’m just saying it’s unlikely.” Shail laughed. “If Kirtash has deleted all those files—”

“He’s not so deft.”

“Any better ideas? Files don’t just disappear. He was looking for the book, he must have deleted the files and gone straight for the guy.”

“Maybe he deleted his information as well, to keep us off the track.”

“No, that wasn’t the impression I got. They didn’t mention the information on Parell had been lost, just that it’s incomplete.”

“What if he’s one of us, Shail? We have to get to him first.”

“Kirtash must already be after him, but he’s disappeared. Parrell won’t be easy to locate.”

“He’s dead,” Alsan sentenced.

“We don’t know that.”

“Then, if he’s not dead, we have to get the book from him—”

“We don’t even know if he has copies. Let’s see what Victoria and Jack have picked up first. Let them figure some things out. We were done too soon. And May might still need a while.”

“What is she doing? Isn’t she with the kids?”

“I texted her to try and get us some more details on the book. She hasn’t said anything yet. Let’s give them time.”

“How much time?”

“Jeez, I don’t know, a while.”

They hang around the room, leaning onto the white tiles as they waited.

“Can I ask you something?” Alsan said after a while.

“Sure.”

“Don’t laugh. What’s a vampire?”

Shail laughed softly. The second they’d all landed in London, he’d joked about Jack, who’d just come out of a four-month long night, almost being a vampire, and Alsan had deadpan replied he didn’t know what a vampire was, drifting forward into a city he didn’t know, out of pride. And now, when all his reasons to convey harshness were either suppressed or downstairs conducting research, the question had come out, still deadpan, but much more honest than his previous ‘I don’t know what a vampire is’.

“Mythological creature. Drinks human blood for a living,” Shail said. “Other details differ depending on the source.”

Alsan frowned slightly, clearly thinking. “I still don’t get the joke you made earlier.”

“They’re … usually portrayed as very pale, shunning the sun because it burns them.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see…”

They fell quiet for a couple of minutes. Their breaths were the only elevator music around to keep oneself distracted. They made music of their own, combined, parallel.

Then Alsan gave vocals to their melody. “How do they drink the blood?”

The prince was serious as hell, genuinely wondering, but Shail couldn’t help it, and he faced him, smirking to himself. Alsan was taller by more than an inch or two, so it was the perfect alignment. Shail leaned in carefully, feeling Alsan stiffen a little at first, taken aback, and pressed his lips to Alsan’s warm throat. “Like this,” he said, “only they do it by piercing the skin with their sharp fangs…”

“Interesting,” Alsan said neutrally. And next, he moved quickly as ever, and caged Shail between him, towering, and the white wall, his eyes glowing in the strange light of the restrooms. And the wizard had thought he wasn’t keeping up…

Alsan pressed his hips against his, a hand above both their heads on the wall, and went for Shail’s neck as well. He didn’t bite either, but he lingered. It smelled so much like him Alsan felt as if he’d just stepped into his room.

Shail held his head in his hands and guided it upwards so he could kiss him, but Alsan kissed him first, his breath hot and heavy between their lips, and his hands rough on his body. Practice had made Alsan a bull; when at first he’d been demure and confused, not knowing what to do, soon the prince had caught up, and let emotion rule where control and disciple normally did.

Alsan did not do things softly.


	5. Chapter 5

A wizard has their methods, Shail had said, when the Resistance had gathered again in the Library’s hall and discussed what to do about finding the man who had the book they were looking for.

Shail’s methods, apparently, consisted in discussing with May what would be the better method, Alsan thought.

“Okay, so…” Shail said. “Quickest way to finding this person is the phonebook. I can get my hands on one pretty fast—”

“Quickest way to find him is Google.” When Shail looked at May, his eyes wide open, she blushed and laughed. “I didn’t say ‘most efficient’, I said ‘quickest’.”

He looked at her, then at the group at large. Jack and Victoria were mumbling something under their breaths, laughing discreetly, and Alsan looked ready to murder someone, his eyebrows arched. Then Shail looked back at May and fished out his phone.

“I’ve a London phonebook right here,” he said, and smiled at her like a child on Christmas. “You guys google and I do the phonebook entries?”

“You really want to do those, huh?” Jack said, laughing as he and Victoria got their own phones out.

Apparently, Alsan thought again, not entirely interested, something useful meant Parrel’s empty house in the middle of London. Which meant…walking in those strangely elegant shows that pinched at his feet.

All paired up but him, they marched on.

Dusk had already engulfed London’s suburbs by the time May and Shail had found the right Peter Parrell. Thanks to both their methodologies combined, they’d tracked the moves of four different people with that name in the area, and had slowly discarded them until only one remained. The Resistance had thus ended up in front of a small block of buildings, where Peter Parrell must live. Like the people at the Library had let on, this particular Mr Parrell had vanished from the face of the Earth. His phone must’ve been off, and his email had been thoroughly erased (Shail had tried accessing it via a very hacky app, and found the address didn’t exist anymore), thus explaining why no one at the Library had been able to mail him, and no one answered the house phone, as they’d expected, so now the only way to get some clues on him and the book was breaking and entering.

“What’s the protocol for this?” Alsan asked.

“Get in without triggering the alarm,” Jack said.

Alsan looked at Jack like he was crazy, but soon his face went back to his normal neutral expression.

“Alohomora would work…” May whispered to Victoria under her breath, smirking.

“So would busting down the door,” Alsan said, not understanding the reference. “If no one’s living there, that’s the best way in.”

“The neighbors would hear us,” Shail said, shaking his head. He’d heard the Alohomora comment, and while he was not trying another Harry Potter spell seriously (the last time he’d ended up conjuring a huge translucent blueish tektek on the forest), using magic was the best idea—the light-in-his-eyes idea, the quick way, the elegant, efficient way that did the job better, although Alsan would always take brawn over magic any day. “I can get us in, but judging by this planet’s obsession with thin walls,” he shot an amused glance at May and the kids, “and by Parrell’s strict no-contact list, I wouldn’t be too sure the neighbors won’t hear us and call the police anyway.”

“Yeah, and the police force isn’t as relaxed as in other places,” Victoria said. “We should be careful.”

               

Nothing made as little sense to Alsan as that room they were in. Cluttered Earthian evidence all around that he didn’t understand, clothes hanging on the doors, a mess of such tremendous magnitude he was tempted to look away and not touch anything. The kids, as Shail and him called them sometimes, were the first to kneel by things and slowly make their way to some thing or another. May shot one quick glance at the pair of them, wizard and prince, acknowledging the situation silently, and she joined Jack and Victoria, looking for anything that would strike her attention. She still couldn’t help but eavesdrop quietly on the few words Shail and Alsan exchanged before getting down to business.

“You sure it’ll be here?” Shail was touched that the prince had worded it like that, instead of making it an assumption that he might be wrong.

He shook his head anyway. He might be right most of the time after long hours of research, but field work was different, although he loved getting his hands dirty on something like this. They were so close…

“At this point, we’re hoping for traces of the book,” he admitted in low voice, almost afraid of his own voice in this quiet house, “not the book itself.”

Alsan nodded solemnly, standing back as his friend walked in.

“Come on, let’s get to it. We have to search everything…” Shail’s words trailed off as he entered the living room and toured it once, then sat in front of the computer. After a while, he managed to get it online, and starting scanning it for anything related to the book while the others rummaged the shelves, the piles of clothes and dishes for a hard drive or a USB or CD where there could be some extra information.

At long last, Jack handed Shail a box with a dragon image printed on it, and a USB drive inside. When the folder explorer let him access the drive, the first document he opened was a detailed, neat picture of a page of a book. He mumbled something under his breath, gushy, and pressed the arrow key until he’d seen several pages. Then, he looked at Alsan from the corner of his eye, and saw the proud prince of Vanissar standing in the middle of the room like it was the ocean in a storm and he was the smallest of ships. Shail smiled, ejected the drive, put it safely into his pocket, and waited until the discussing about Kirtash knowing or not about this information died and Alsan suggested going back home to investigate it further, leaving May behind when they might’ve needed her most.

 

Years of non-stop discovery on Earth wouldn’t have prepared anyone for what Shail felt when he was home, under the soft starlight, and he was seeing, for the first time since he’d left Idhún, up-close evidence that his people had once inhabited Limbhad, then delved right into Earth. Evidence of a hard time for the Magical Order that had, yet, pushed everything forward.

Victoria was hobbling close to him, ogling at the images the printer spat, and trying to understand what the words said as he dived right into full translation mode. But in spite of May’s translator influence on him, he wasn’t one. He soon semi-forgot about Victoria’s presence, doing a 100% out loud approach to the text, not really to keep her in the loop, but because verbalizing his thoughts helped him figured them out.

“Gods…” he gasped at a drawing of an object he’d thought was just a legend.

Victoria practically jumped in her seat. “What? What is it?”

He frowned and leaned closer to the text, as if that would make it clearer.

“Nothing. It’s just…” his voice trailed off. “I didn’t think I’d find this here.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“There’s information in this book that matches the description of many weapons we have here on Limbhad that we thought had been lost to history. This,” he said, pointing at the miniature drawing, “is even less than that, it’s the stuff of myths. And yet the exiled wizards who wrote the book equate it to the other items, meaning it must exist—or at least have existed at some point. And therefore have passed on to the next generations, descendants of those wizards.”

“So then it’s here on Earth,” Victoria understood. “But why would Kirtash know of it if it’s strayed information and mostly myth?”

“Good question,” Shail said, chuckling yet not amused at all. “And more importantly, why is he looking for it?”

“Maybe we should talk it out with Alsan and Jack too.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Later. I have to consult some sources first.” He stood up, leaving all the sheets of paper behind. “I’ll be right back.”

 

Ayshel, the lady with the magical staff created by the unicorns to be used only by those who had seen them but not touched them. Ayshel, the martyr. Ayshel, whose story and staff had been put down as myth, only to revive as history now, two eras later, and with as little background information surrounding them as it was possible.

After a heated discussion in the library, the Resistance had come to the right conclusions, dangerous ones that threatened the more or less undisturbed peace they’d had lately: Ayshel’s Staff could lead them straight to Lunnaris, straight to one half of Idhún’s salvation, and also Shail’s ease—and they had to find it before Kirtash did. Or else…

The only plausible way Shail had found to outdoing Kirtash this time was to sit down and translate—fast—so he could get there first. His heart pulsed anger at the thought of his enemy finding the staff before he did, then finding the unicorn. Shail knew he was the working mind and heart of the Resistance, that without him the entire enterprise would fall, that without him nothing stood, and knowing now he had the literal responsibility of saving his own people and his Lunnaris again was added weight to his stress. Normally, he could ignore the extra weight, but today it was only a reminder that he had to do it right.

Not wanting to be bossy but still coming across as such, he put everyone up to reading around Ayshel’s history, and then the entire Second Era, looking for clues. Yet soon he realized he couldn’t work with myth and basic history. He needed details. He needed the Book of the Third Era, and he was the only one who could read it. So he did. And slowly the lights around him went off, and the kids went to bed. Victoria had school the next day, and Jack liked to follow her schedule to be awake when she was.

In the end, only Alsan stayed. Shail had tried at first to let May know about the recent findings, but later he’d just let it slip his mind, and now the phone lay forgotten on the table, buried by dusty books.

“Time for a break?” he asked.

Shail looked at him in a way that the phrase ‘I can’t take a break now, Alsan’ was perfectly and wordlessly conveyed.

“I won’t let him get her,” he only said, his eyes on a giant world map, his pencil over the lines of the Book, hoping to find traces of something he wasn’t finding yet. “It’s the one thing I’m supposed to be doing here. The one thing.”

He didn’t look back at Alsan again, he just moved the pictures around, and glanced back and forth at them and the map. But the prince was relentless as he was stoic, and he sat down with him, although he knew he was useless in that scenario.

“You’ve told me time after time that we need to rest as well,” Alsan said, echoing the many conversations they’d had about it in the past. “You won’t be doing anyone any favors if you overwork yourself.”

Shail scoffed. “Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not,” Alsan said, “and you know.”

“I mean it, Alsan. If you were me right now, you’d’ve already stepped off Limbhad and started looking for Yandrak in a world you despise and don’t know. But because I’m the one in this position, I’m crazy, right?” There was a momentary spark of distractive anger in the wizard’s eyes, but it soon vanished under more dust and ancient languages only he could’ve ever deciphered.

“I never said that. I’m just saying you need a break,” he said calmly “We all do.”

“I’ll rest after I’ve found the staff.”

“We all know you won’t. You’ll want to go get it as soon as you find it.”

At this, Shail abruptly pushed the chair away from the table, and stood towering over Alsan, who was still sitting.

“Of course I will! You know what this means, god damn it! You know, because you’re where I am in this. And yet you stand there, like you didn’t give a shit, and tell me that I’m over-obsessing.” He looked at Alsan in the eye, serious as the prince had ever seen him, and slowly took a seat again, regaining his frown. He added, in a much softer but still pissed-off voice: “Well, newsflash: the prophecy won’t stop dictating our fate if I sleep. Now let me work.”

Alsan sighed.     “Stop trying to save the world for a moment. Just stop. Please.”

“I’M NOT TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD, I HAVE TO SAVE IT. Every time we move ahead, he’s there. And if that happens now, if he finds her—” Shail’s voice broke.

“I’m scared too,” Alsan admitted. He felt like something had just stomped on his chest at the realization of what he’d just said outload. It’d never been something he’d wanted to admit, “but we have to keep it together. You have to have your mind cleared of that. Otherwise, you’re just as bad as the kid.”

“Careful, Alsan.” If Shail’s voice could’ve glared at him, Alsan was certain it would have.

“I’m not trying to start a fight. Go to bed, for just ten minutes. I’ll wake you. You can work as long and hard as you want after, but for the love of the gods, just leave that for a moment.”

“I can’t.”

Alsan smiled to himself.

“You’re a stubborn man… I’ll stay with you, then.” Until you find the staff or fall asleep from exhaustion, Alsan completed his phrase to the quiet solace of his mind. One day he’d voice his loyalty that clearly, but as he’d already seen, what Shail needed that night wasn’t any more pressure or distraction. If he didn’t want to sleep, he wouldn’t, and Alsan wouldn’t make him. But he’d stay, he’d share the bags under his eyes and the drowsiness. It was the least he could do, because, deep down, Alsan knew that if he’d been the one sitting there instead of Shail, his wrath would have been mighty enough to turn the mountains behind the house into thin powder.

When Shail found the exact location of the staff, he’d already been leaning on Alsan for a couple of hours, and his eyelids were heavy and he had bags under his eyes and math still buzzing in his brain, but as he’d told Alsan, he’d be damned if he slept through this. So, the both of them, impossibly exhausted, had gathered everyone on the house and had left for the Sahara.

               

Maybe it was the heat. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe his body had finally fallen asleep after almost two days without getting any.

Maybe he just refused to believe it really was Alsan lying on the ground, with Kirtash’s sword digging into his skin.

Shail slowly put one hand on Victoria’s and Jack’s shoulder. Maybe, just maybe, if the three of them moved forward little by little until he could get to Alsan, he wouldn’t have to make a choice. He would rather die there and die knowing Alsan was safe than be forced to leave without him. His stomach was churning, his heart was pounding, beating too fast, and his mind was in three hundred different places at once.

Maybe if he’d listened to Alsan last night, if he’d gotten some sleep, he could’ve thought a way around this. Instead, he could only hear his own pulse in his ears, and Haiass nearing Alsan’s neck.

Maybe, if he called the Soul, she could take the kids and Alsan away from there. Maybe—

Jack was shouting at Kirtash, at Elrion, at everything, angry and resentful and wanting to fight for Alsan as much as Shail did, but at least he could show it. Shail had to grab him by his collar when the boy lunged forward, ready to scratch Kirtash’s killer eyes out of their sockets. Victoria shook under Shail’s hand. Jack fought his grip.

Shail wasn’t aware of having spoken at, but he knew he had when someone shouted a reply at Kirtash and Jack had run for him into the assassin’s trap, and then Victoria, sweet Victoria, made all of Shail’s choices for him before he could even move.

The girl stepped forward to try and save Jack, and Shail had to react. He grabbed her, barely, and tried to hold her there, still speechless. He was losing people by the minute. He was losing—he was—

Jack was a dead man now, under Kirtash’s sword. Victoria would exchange herself for him. And all Shail could do was stare.

Stare through it all, his eyes wide open, his brain not registering anything other than his losses as Victoria freed herself from his arms and ran and ran to the staff, hidden, dug in rock, and held it and gave Shail a small part of what he’d lost. His mind, Jack, herself.

He positioned himself again behind the kids, as slowly and discreetly as he could, wanting to disappear, wishing he was on the ground with Alsan—instead of Alsan. It all was too fast for him to really decide. Victoria said the magic words, she took Shail’s place and offered herself in exchange for the prince. And that’s when his world broke in thousands of pieces—when she took a step towards Kirtash and all Shail could think to do—all he could do—was just grab a brief hold of her and Jack, and leave. Leave. Leave—

He was thankful for Alsan being unconscious. He was thankful he hadn’t seen his betrayal. Because Shail would have to live with it. He’d saved Victoria, and Lunnaris, and Idhún with her, but he’d failed the save the only one he truly wanted saving. The only one worth saving. The only one who had directly needed it. He wondered, travelling across the worlds at the speed of light, his conscience a mixture of too many of them, if he’d ever really sleep again, if he’d ever forgive himself enough to.

The Soul left Victoria and Jack and Limbhad, and Shail barely even touched its floors before he asked her to take him to Earth, to the only place he felt he could be right now.

 

It was a beautiful October day in New York. May had spent the morning on the porch, her mums all cozy on the swing, reading or pretending to. It had been a while since May had glared at them for being romantic in her presence, and now that she missed romantic contact of her own, she wasn’t about to take up the habit again. They looked a kind of happy that was almost oblivious. May wondered if everybody on this Earth was like that and she’d been stranded forever on the side of the Resistance: an Earthian Resistant whose scope belonged to neither her planet nor Idhún. A nobody who rejected her homeworld and whose destiny wasn’t waiting for her in a foreign universe that would never let her in.

She wanted desperately to belong there, with an ardor that had made her bitter and sleepless, and she ached to care as hard for Earth, to relate to its struggles at least half as well. But deep down May could listen to the news and not flinch at the monstrosities her own kin allowed. It was Idhún’s tyranny and catastrophes that moved her deeply.

Shail had never truly understood. He’d always told her that Earthians would never get what his world was going through, that they were too distant to the whole conflict. And she’d never dared confess she didn’t feel distant, she felt like she was right in the eye of the hurricane—because of him.

“May,” one of her moms called, “aren’t you going out today?”

May looked up slowly from her phone. “Don’t think so.” She sighed. “In fact, I think I’m going in; it’s too hot out here.”

“Why don’t you invite your friend over?” her other mom suggested with a smile. “He’s very nice.”

“That, he is,” May said, standing up, “and he also is smart enough to know he’s welcome here whenever.”

She went back into the house, shaking her head. Her moms always wanted her to mingle, and they often didn’t care whether it was inside or outside the house. They liked Shail, May’s only friend—but who wouldn’t?—, and liked to ask if he was coming over at least once every day, right before he popped up out of nowhere and charmed his way in. If May’s moms hadn’t been gay as hell, she would’ve thought they kind of found him attractive. She knew she did. But who wouldn’t?

He was in her room when she opened the door, his back turned to her, slightly moving up and down as he cried silently into her pillows. May bit her lip and lay down on the mattress with him like they always did. She was tempted to ask, voice a concern she never wanted out of her just in case she masked it a little too hard with jokes and sass.

“I take it the mission went south,” she finally said, softly, pressing her face against his neck.

He didn’t say anything at once. May heard him sob very slightly, and then he turned to face her. His expression was the embodiment of deep, deep grief.

“They took Alsan,” he said. “They took him and I did nothing.”

Grief turned to anger. And both were highly destructive together; they often birthed strong emotions, like grief and remorse. They were dangerous grounds.

“It was either him or the kids,” he continued. “It was either Alsan or Victoria. And I didn’t choose him.” He sniffed and looked at her with puffy red eyes that made her own dormant sorrow rise up to meet his. “I didn’t choose him...”

In bits and pieces, he told her the rest of the story, and she could almost feel his desperation when Alsan had been under Kirtash’s sword and Shail hadn’t been able to save him because he’d been frozen in place.

She rubbed his arm softly. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“I wanted to,” he said. “He deserved better than me leaving without him.”

“He knows you did the right thing.”

“The right thing?” he repeated, angry.

“Neither you nor him would’ve forgiven yourselves if you’d let Kirtash take Victoria.”

“I can’t forgive myself either for letting him take Alsan.”

“Well, you’re going to have to,” May said, firmly. “Alsan is the prince of Vanissar, and he found the last dragon. They’re not gonna kill him, he’s too valuable. You’re going to have to face that, and plan something in response.”

Shail sighed. He knew she was probably right. When he lost his mind, she always had hers to serve as backup.

“They’ll want something in return,” he said. “They’ll want the Staff. And Victoria with it.” He glanced at her, and she saw the rest of the sentence in his brown eyes—I can’t let them take Victoria.

Victoria and Alsan were Shail’s touchstones. His home, in their own way. The people he went back to, because of his mission, and in spite of it. Living in the same space with somebody made you close with them, but May was sure the bonds between the people in the House on the Border went much, much further than that.

“Then don’t trade with them. Steal from them.”

“Kirtash won’t be fooled easily.”

“He’s going to be distracted, thinking he’s got you cornered. He’ll expect a negotiation, a trade—but he won’t see a rescue coming.”

“Even if he does, what other choice do we have? He was always the leader,” he said bitterly, “not me.”

After a while, he said what he’d meant to: “I need him.” It came out as a confession rather than an assertion, and May’s heart broke a little.

“That’s not true,” she said softly. “You need him with you in The Resistance, and it’s not because he’s better than you.”

“We could lose everything we’ve been fighting for ... all because I can’t let him go. So much could go wrong—we could all fall,” he was saying in small voice, “Kirtash could get the staff and find Lunnaris and then everything goes to shit. And I am going to let all of that just not matter because I am in love with their prisoner? Who the fuck put me in the front line? Who the fuck decided I was fit to be a hero?”

May knew now for sure they were on the same line. He was almost on the brink of getting up and leaving to find Alsan. She could feel it in him.

“You’re human. It happens.”

He smirked, against his will. “Which part?”

“You’re allowed to fuck up, you know? Alsan may be the perfect little hero, but you’re not, and you’re just as heroic, and deserve the chance to do what you think it’s right. I’ve known you for years, your «right» is the only one I’d sign up for.” She smiled, but his own smile had died in his lips. “And I hate signing up for things.”

“Rescuing him is not the right thing, May. I’d be letting my world down. I’d be letting him down.”

She snuggled closer and faced him, serious. “And who would pick up the pieces if you don’t?”

“There’d be no pieces left of me after.” He quieted for a moment. There were no pieces of him now. “What am I supposed to choose, duty or love?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was honest. Too honest to answer, and too raw to leave without a reply, however half-assed.

“I know what you would choose, and I know what Alsan would choose. But I don’t get to make that call.”

“Sometimes I wish you could.” He sighed.

“Sometimes I wish you’d let me,” she counterattacked, softly.

He stared into her eyes for a while, understanding, just not to the extent she’d always wanted him to. She was asking for permission to intervene, for his word allowing her to be a part of the routine that had stripped him off the last traces of youth and had thrown him right into the pool of adult suffering. He saw it in her eyes, beyond them, he saw into her mind, and it was begging for permission.

Shail wished she was the first person he’d had to deny this to. But he’d seen too much, and his skin and Alsan’s—and most importantly, their minds—were witnesses to the danger they were facing every day, facing and ignoring for the sake of staying sane.

“You deserve a life,” he said gently. He couldn’t condemn her to the same thing he’d taken as his own responsibility. It was one thing to keep her in the loop, but having her in the loop—he had to look away from her.

“I know that’s what you tell Victoria, but I’m not her, and I can sure as hell tell you what she would if she didn’t fear your reaction so much: I have no life. Before you came to this forgotten town in the middle of nowhere I was just a kid with books to worlds I’d never see, and then I met you, and my life became waiting for you to open the door to your own corner of Idhún. Without this, I’m nothing again.”

“You’re not nothing.”

“I’m nothing,” she repeated, admitting no rebuke, “but you’re not. And I know you. Fuck you, Shail, I know you better than I’ve ever known anybody.” She paused. “And I know what you’d choose.”

He knew too, deep down. Yet all he could think and say was the same four words that had him anchored to May’s room right now:

“I can’t do it...”

“You can’t take either option! But you have to. You have to! Talk to the kids, see what they think. Alsan is their family too.”

“I don’t want this... I don’t want any of it. I wanna go home... I should’ve done something, anything... and I did nothing.”

“Whatever you do, I’ll be here. The doors to my home will always be open to you. My mums can’t live without you walking in...” she added, trying to lighten the mood up a little.

“Your mums like me too much,” Shail said.

May exhaled slowly. Her voice wasn’t too loud or too small, but her words, though powerful, were:

“Who wouldn’t?”

She was silent and still for some minutes after, pondering what she’d say next, and how to word it. Finally, she turned on the bed and looked at him, her expression serious.

“Listen to me, I know it’s shit, I know it’s too much, but these kids are waiting on you. They deserve to have a say.” She could almost feel his brain churning, the images he was holding on to and the lightbulb that had just lit up with an idea.

“They’re kids.”

“We’re kids too,” she said, and she finally exhaled and looked up and just spat it out. “I know you’re dying to just find the son of a bitch and get Alsan yourself, I get that. But you have to tell them. They deserve the information, and being taken into account.”

“They’re going to want to come with me.” Shail shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for losing everybody.”

“And we can’t be responsible for losing you.”

“May—” he tried to say, but she spoke over him, fast and loud. He thought to himself that her moms would better not be listening.

“You literally are the future of the Resistance. You and Alsan. You need backup this time, if you fall, the kids’ll have no one. They’ll have lost you too,” she tried to reason with him, although she knew that in doing so she was listing up two children for a war that wasn’t their own to fight yet.

“If I fall…they’ll have you.”

She shook her head; her eyes were getting teary, but she didn’t let it show in her voice. “I’m not like you. I can’t protect anybody.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders. If he didn’t do this now, he never would. His eyes were hard as stone when he looked at her.

“Promise me. Promise me that if I fall, you’ll take care of them. Promise me you’ll fulfill my mission.” Once, time ago, he’d thought about it, about his post vacant, and about who would step in for him. He’d never realized it before, that he’d eventually have to let someone take over. And that that someone would probably not be one of the kids. The kids would need someone to keep them safe, not to embark on a quest that had made generations of wizards mad in the past.

“Can you please stop talking like this was goodbye?” she whispered angrily, exasperated.

“It’s not,” he said, trying to mean it. “I just—I need to tell them the truth. I need to—think…”

May understood he meant telling them how he was planning to go solo, and at least letting them try and convince him otherwise. She hoped, with her heart shrinking more and more, that they would succeed.

“Okay,” she said. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, and she no longer knew if she was supposed to hold him here a little more, or if she had to let him go, upset as he was. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah. I guess I needed the pep talk.”

“It wasn’t a pep talk,” she said.

Shail smiled. “Needed it anyway.”

She sat up as well. She’d messed her ponytail up.

“Come see me before you go.” She looked down at her knees. “I couldn’t bear it if—”

“I know. I’ll be here.” He paused, biting his lip. Then he looked up at her. “It’ll probably be tonight.”

She put a hand to his cheek and forced herself to smile for him.

“Sleep a little,” she said. “You look like you haven’t slept for days.”

“Haven’t slept for days.”

“Then sleep. Alsan won’t recognize you when you rescue him looking like that.”

She moved so she could sit by his side, and leaned her head on his left shoulder.         

“I don’t want to do this…” he muttered.

“I know,” she said. “I know…”

Eventually, he stood up. “I have to go.”

“I can come with you, if you need me.”

“Won’t your moms mind?”

She scoffed softly. “My moms don’t care.”

“They like me too much.”

May smiled, mostly to herself, and held his hand, ready.

“You’re worth liking.”

 

What was left of the Resistance sat together in the living room, pretending to be normal kids, pretending their hearts didn’t ache at what had happened barely hours ago, pretending they didn’t all blame someone else, pretending Shail was in the right state to be sitting there and taking the blame. May watched as Jack, angry and too blinded by a crush he couldn’t see, shouted at him, asking him why he’d done nothing and left without at least attempting to rescue Alsan. Victoria, like May herself, had tried to speak and calm things down, but anger was anger, and at this point of solidity, it would erupt uninterruptedly until it drained.

Shail took the hit. He tried to explain his motives, although he didn’t fully comprehend them himself, and eventually just told them the whole truth. What he wanted to do, what he’d done to get to this point, and why a tiny part of his brain had recognized there was a bigger risk in letting Kirtash find Lunnaris than there was in giving Alsan up.

He told them about the prophecy alleging only a dragon and a unicorn together would defeat Ashran. He told them about the last of their species, the real reason Alsan and him were on Earth. He told them about Ashran conjuring the astra to increase his odds of surviving the prophecy. About sending Kirtash after Alsan and Shail to increase his odds even more.

When he started to tell the story, the room fell quiet, and May wondered, as she had many times before, what the point was—why he couldn’t just close his eyes and rest. She found her answer in the shape of a name, in the shape of clarity.

“I’d never seen a live shek before,” he began, “just drawings in old library books at Kazlunn. They’d been banished eras ago by the dragons, so all I could wonder was, where were they?, why weren’t they here fighting the sheks? Of course, I didn’t know, back then, what was happening all over Idhún: the dragons were falling from the sky like flies, wrapped in star-fire. And when I was face-to-face with the shek, all I could do was stay still, hoping it wouldn’t smell the magic off me, wishing for a force stronger than myself that would come in my aid. Eventually, I made my way through the trees, trying to hide in them, and stayed there well after I knew the shek had gone. In normal circumstances, I would’ve teleported away from there. But I don’t know why, I didn’t. Maybe it was fate after all… Then I saw the unicorns. I wasn’t up to speed about the prophecy, but nothing that can kill a unicorn is good. And nothing that made these elusive creatures show themselves to just anybody is either. As you know, unicorns only show themselves to those they want to give magic to. No one has ever figured out their choosing criteria—their choices appear to be random—, but I felt lucky to have been chosen anyway. The first time I saw a unicorn I was a baby; I didn’t grow up to become a merchant in my homeland, Nanetten, like my father before me; I left for one of the Towers instead when I was older. The second—the second time I saw a unicorn was then, in Alis Lithban. I saw many that day… so many unicorns, dead. I ran to each and every one, hoping that they were still alive so I could take them to Kazlunn with me, but they all died before I could do anything. I looked and looked for a living unicorn, and then I saw her. A foal, so very young, almost newborn. She was shaking under the leaves, surrounded by forest creatures. They told me … she was the last one, they told me to take her, so I did. I remember she didn’t fight me, she was so weak…

“I named her Lunnaris. It’s a bit of an obvious name for a unicorn, since it means ‘carrier of magic’, and really all unicorns are. But she was the last one. That’s why, deep down, she couldn’t have any other name.”

 

A fire sword. A legendary staff. And a wizard. Shail wondered, after, if he’d been right to let the kids join his plan, if it would serve any purpose and help them succeed, or if his worst fears were soon to be very real.

He wanted to hope for the best. But he was alone against a tidal wave without Alsan to help him decide which way to run. And Alsan was alone, somewhere, without Shail to help him see things weren’t always black and white.

Sometimes there was gray.

 

Westchester looked like it had been dyed gray when the sun fell, when the streetlights weren’t on yet. And May’s room, dark at night, was a pleasant shade of gray as well. It was their own corner of oblivion.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked, after a long while of looking at her ceiling and hearing Shail breath next to her. Guilt ate her alive, ravenous, as soon as the words were out. But now there was nothing she could do about the aftermath.

“What is it?” he said softly.

“I want to go to Idhún with you, after all of this is over.

He sat up on the bed at once, pale, although she had no way to know. “You want to—what??? Do you know what you’re asking? It’s nuts, you would—”

May sat too. She scoffed. “Would what? Die? Because I’m not like you? Yeah, probably, but you know something?, it’s better than being here. It’s better than living here, alone, with the knowledge that there’s another world out there that I could like more this one.”

Shail looked upset. He rubbed the back of his neck, and then looked up at her, his eyes open wide.

“Do you know what you’re asking?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. She’d thought it over many times, how it would feel to be home at last, to have a world beneath her feet and not just a piece of cardboard. But she’d never had the nerve to ask, and now that she had, she understood her anxiety about it. She was watching Shail’s reaction live, and it was likely to skin her alive. “Please take me with you. I don’t care where, I don’t care if…if later you decide to just dump me somewhere. Just don’t leave me behind here.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t risk your life like that, you’re my friend.”

“I’m asking you to.”

“I know. I know, damn it. But—” He stared into his eyes, afraid his gaze might work better than his words. He’d always been so bad at words… “May, this is walking into a war we’re talking about. I’m not even sure I can sign the kids up for it, and it’s kind of their war. So I can’t—I can’t just—you’re my friend.” That was it. The armor he wore, the weapons he’d use. She was his friend, and he couldn’t let her risk everything, give everything up, to join a fight that wasn’t hers to begin with. He didn’t understand that deep down, where no Idhunian would ever find it, she felt it was hers to belong to. She longed for it to.

“I’m withering away in this house, this … world,” she tried to explain. “My mums think they care, but all they do is ignore me, take me for granted. I don’t have friends. I don’t have anything. I don’t do anything. I just wait—and I realized it’s not just you that I wait for. I’m waiting for the next thing.”

“You have me,” he said. He took her hand. Next, he’d hug her, and next he’d dissolve into her. Why couldn’t he explain why he didn’t want her to lose herself in his world? And why couldn’t she understand?

“Yeah, and I’m losing you either way, like it or not,” she said sarcastically.

His face darkened. “That’s not true.”

“You either die or you leave.”

“Well, I’m not dying, and when I leave, it won’t be forever.”

She sat so she’d face him directly. “What do you think will happen when you leave for home, Shail? Wars aren’t won in a fortnight. Prophecies take long to come true. What will I do, huh?, wait on my ass on a totally different corner of the universe for you to remember I’m here?”

“Yes. Yes.” He held his arms up in exasperation. “You’d be safe. You’d be…away from the conflict. It’s not your war.”

“Please. You don’t understand, you…you belong in both worlds. You could travel back and forth and both places would feel like yours. But not for me. I’ve been running away from the crushing weight of reality for almost twenty years, I can’t take it anymore, not when I know I could be happy somewhere else. And I can’t go there alone. I can’t.”

She was sinking slowly, and no one seemed to hear her making desperate waves in the water. Not even the best friend she’d always hoped would notice her drowning. He didn’t understand…he’d never understood. It wasn’t just the war, Shail had always thought that no Earthian could truly get what was going on in Idhún and think of it as a real world with real problems. May had known that from day one, she’d just always hoped he’d see past that—or she’d never noticed herself falling for the world and the boy telling her about it.

“I can promise you I’ll come for you when the war is over,” he was saying. “I’ll come for you, and you’ll be able to go wherever you want, settle wherever you want, but please don’t ask me to endanger your life like that now.”

“I’ll get out of your way, I’ll move in somewhere quiet where the war’s just a distant echo.” She was aware of her own words sounding more and more desperate, but she couldn’t help it. This was three years of repressed feelings. Three years of what if.

“The sheks are everywhere. It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care. I’m just as likely to be killed by a shek as I am from getting run over by a car here. Please.”

And suddenly, without apparent reason, Shail deflated, and he hunched on the bed, looking at the crumbled sheets.

“Okay. Okay, if it means that much to you, if you think you could—but you have to tell your mums you’re leaving,” he said, trying to tie lose ends she didn’t see. “And you have to fucking swear to me you won’t get involved in the war.”

She shook her head, and her ponytail swayed with her. “I don’t plan to. I plan on being a safe house for you even after this is over. Somewhere you can go to in the middle of whatever it is you’ll be going through.” She looked at him. “Because you’re staying in the Resistance, aren’t you? After?”

“I don’t know. It’s been too long that I’ve only thought about doing my part. I don’t know what’ll come after. I don’t want to fight directly. But Alsan…he’ll want to, if he survives.”

Alsan… For a moment, he’d almost forgotten he still had to save Alsan, or else nothing else would matter anymore. They’d start losing people at alarming rates and never recover, because the minute they lost Alsan, they’d be losing Shail too, and Victoria with Shail, and Jack with Alsan. He wasn’t ready to carry the full weight of the cause on his two shoulders, albeit he’d already agreed to.

May felt him wavering, and scooted closer, passing an arm around those shoulders that she knew were bearing too much.

“You’re a wizard, Shail,” she said softly. He was reminded of the best Harry Potter meme in existence and almost laughed. “And he’s not expecting you to come off that strong. Just be quick, and it’ll be okay.”

“That’s the problem.”

They were quiet for a while. May lied down again, and soon so did he, and they held hands, both trying to hide from their worlds in each other. In some way, it had always been like this…

“And after you get Alsan back, then what?” she asked.

He sighed. “Probably keep looking. We have Ayshel’s Staff, which is a plus. But still—it looks like we’re light years away. Victoria can’t reach Lunnaris through it.”

“Maybe you can do something.”

He shook his head slightly. Locks of black hair fell on his cheek. He’d been needing a haircut for a long time, May thought, thankful he liked it long and was too lazy to cut it. “There are no spells for that. Only a demiwizard can use the damn thing, and she’s already tried.”

“A locator spell might work?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple. And even if it was, we’d still have a dragon to find.”

She exhaled, and put her forehead to his. Her voice was a thread of human emotion.

“You’re very close. You’ll get there,” she said.

Shail smiled and closed his eyes.

“Wars aren’t won overnight.”

 

Shail had never been suicidal. For years on end he’d juggled several different kinds of stress without a hint of mild depression sinking in; he’d fallen in what he’d thought was unrequited love with a prince, and he’d borne it with all the dignity he hadn’t lost in trying to hide it somewhat decently; he’d fought for his world and for himself, because there were things he needed to do, dreams to feel in his skin, and people to get to know better. He’d slithered through the rough patches, typing for more hours than he should for his final college projects, in the darkened secrecy of someone hiding an affair, or sleeping very few nights a week, his mind on three different dimensions. He’d considered failure, he’d feared it with an intensity that scared him and Alsan equally, but he’d never actually stood up and said he wanted to quit. There was no quitting; he was very aware. He was there to do a job and he must do it, whatever the price, whatever the cost.

Three years of telling himself that had paid off. He fought off each szish that came near Victoria, with no regard for his own life. He wasn’t suicidal, but he wasn’t channeling his inner heroism either. This was all about duty.

As he felt the last of his strength leave him again, he leaned on a tree trunk, trying to repress the guilt Victoria’s pity eyes were making him feel, and he realized it. He was channeling Alsan. Unable to help it, sweating and past the point of exhaustion, he smiled to himself. Just a little longer, he thought, until Jack’s back with Alsan… until Alsan’s back… Alsan…

He grabbed Victoria’s arm, and an odd mixture of both their magical energies—more of hers than of his, since he was well over at his limit—took them to the same spot, hidden among trees, where they’d left Jack disguised as a szish and where they’d watched the thirteen-year-old venture the German fortress.

Shail didn’t even have time to worry about him losing way too much power. There was a weather spell that needed doing to hide them. He set to it with a blind determination that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He sensed Victoria watching him, worried, deeply aware of what could happen to a wizard who exerted themselves like he was doing. When they hid up a tree, she finally got him to rest against the trunk, and she silently, slowly, started transmitting him some of the energy around them, in the darkened secrecy of someone hiding a lie.

Shail wasn’t suicidal. But he knew he should be ready to die tonight for what he believed in, and for the people he loved. For Victoria, whose death would feel like they were ridding him of a lung; for Jack, the brave kid who had put on a foreign skin to safe the man that Shail felt held the Resistance together; for Alsan, because in Shail’s eyes without him, nothing stood; and for May, so she’d never get a taste of the war raging in his own home planet.

That’s why he jumped down the tree when the szish wizard challenged him, and that’s why he acted as the target, his minimum strength barely recovered. Because he could feel it, something shifting in the air, and he knew deep in the marrow of each and every bone that he had to stand up and fight, blindly.

But he was too weak to be a match for the szizh, and the next spell was enough to leave him on the ground, unconscious.

 

He heard before he saw.

“I have to kill you, did you know?” It was the melodious, hypnotic voice of Kirtash, but it sounded much softer than Shail was used to hearing, and it startled him, almost woke him.

“Please. Please, either kill me or let me go, but don’t do this to me.” And this was soft, young Victoria. She was scared, cornered. Shail could feel it in the sharp edges of her words. He could feel it in his heart like he’d never felt it before.

“But you shouldn’t have to die.”

Shail opened his eyes. He remembered how he’d gotten there, on the ground of the dark forest, but he didn’t remember Kirtash having arrived. He must have blacked out during that, during the part that could have cost—could be costing—Victoria her life. He made an effort to rouse, but he couldn’t. He could only watch, mesmerized and terrified, as Kirtash coiled around Victoria’s mind and body like a snake, his face calm but intrigued.

 “I shouldn’t be surprised,” Kirtash was saying, softly. “I could let you go.”

“Then let me go.”

“If you stay in the Resistance, you’ll die sooner or later. The best thing you can do is leave, Victoria.”

“I’m not going to.”

The assassin took a deep breath and looked at the girl in the eyes, although she tried to resist. He was stronger, and soon he was delving into her brown pupils. She was shaking hard.

“Then don’t cross paths again with me, child, because I won’t have another option but to kill you next time.” Then suddenly, as if awaken by some mysterious call, Kirtash’s eyes widened. He didn’t stop looking into her own. “Although there might be another way. Come with me.”

“What—?” Victoria said, lost in his eyes, or lost in her own reflection in them. Shail couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Kirtash was … offering her to go with him, why wasn’t he killing her? He could feel Victoria’s uncertainty as his own. And yet…the young killer was firm in his proposal, and hi eyes—Shail saw him slowly get lost too in Victoria. In her…light.

“Come with me. By my side, you’ll be my empress. Together, we will govern Idhún.” It was radiant, like a star before going supernova. Her eyes gave off most of it, consistently, beautifully. Shail felt lucky in the core of his being for being allowed to witness this birth of light, even at this distance.

“I—I don’t get it. It’s…absurd. You’re playing me, aren’t you?”

Kirtash seemed to break out of it briefly enough to recover some composure. But he was immersed in her light, just as Shail was.

“And how’s that going to help me?” said the killer.

The light pushed inside of Victoria, luminous enough to break through. Shail felt it too in his heart, the widening of something, the beginning. The end.

“You’re trying to confound me.”

“You’re already confused, Victoria. But I can show you many things…Victoria…”

“Why?” the girl asked.

And suddenly it hit him. Suddenly, the world stopped spinning on its axis, and Shail was back on Idhunian lands. His hands were green from the colors of the forest, his lungs breathing scented, strong air that slipped through his veins into his magical energy. He closed his eyes, lost in a cherished memory, and he saw it with as much clarity as there could be in the world. So clearly he saw it, for a second he felt like a god in a world full of mortals. He was in the light. And he was holding a newborn unicorn foal in his arms.

“Because you and I aren’t so different. And it won’t be long before you realize it,” Kirtash kept muttering to Victoria.

Shail opened his eyes, and realization poured all over him. He was far enough that he’d have to run to Victoria to tell her, tell her what he should’ve recognized in her three years ago in Switzerland but hadn’t.

“It’s not true. No, it’s not true. We’re different.”

“We’re both sides of the same coin, Victoria. We’re complementary. I exist because you exist, and viceversa.”

Shail stood up with a strength he did not have. He stood, and he started walking to the distant tree where Victoria was looking at Kirtash, who was mesmerized, but she wasn’t lost in any light. She was the light—

“No…” she was saying, trying to get away from the killer again.

—the light of the unicorn—

Shail saw it before Kirtash or Victoria did. Maybe it was fate, maybe he was just looking in the right direction, but he saw him before Kirtash could.

“Elrion, don’t!” yelled the Idhunian assassin.

A beam of dark magical energy was shot from Elrion’s hands towards Victoria. Kirtash’s own power tried to reach her first, desperately, wading in a light beyond his own comprehension.

Shail panicked, and in a burst of instinctive magic he hadn’t felt through his veins in years, he teleported right in front of the girl, and both magical beams hit his chest.

The last thing he felt before his brain collapsed and his body vanished was the light of the unicorn, and its wrath, as Victoria looked at him like they had just removed a lung from her chest.

And then, her light dissolved into absolute darkness.

And then…silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both the story about the unicorn and the conversation that leads Shail to realize Victoria is Lunnaris are unofficial translations of the book, and I made up the narration around it xD


	6. Epilogue

Limbhad. The silence stands out for its absence. Alsan is howling, barging his body, covered in grey fur, against the walls and door of the basement. Jack, his heart mourning two losses tonight, stands on the other side of the door. Tears run through both his cheeks and Alsan’s, and the kid has no idea how he can be speaking right now. But he is. Alsan deserves to know.

“He’s dead,” the boy mutters, his lip quivering. “Alsan…” his voice breaks, and he hears Alsan hit the door harder. It won’t hold much longer.

But when Jack’s already giving up on his friend’s sanity, the growling and howling stop enough for Alsan to coarsely say:

“Tell me…” he cries. “Tell me how.”

The beast inside the prince of Vanissar doesn’t quieten, it’s rude and rough on his insides, while Jack parts his lips and tells the story Victoria couldn’t finish telling him. But Jack must finish it. Because Jack knows, deep down at his core, that the pain Alsan is feeling is equal to no other, even that of the beast tearing him apart.

So he tells it.

“Shail knew we shouldn’t have come there,” Jack mumbles. “He knew letting you go was the best thing for the Resistance, but we all pushed him. Even that girl, May. Because it was what he wanted to do, and you know how he is—” Jack fell coldly quiet. “…was.”

“How did it happen?” Alsan said, softly. For a moment, it was easy for Jack and himself to pretend his body wasn’t under invasion.

“Kirtash had Victoria cornered, hypnotized…” Jack said. “And Elrion just pitched in and was about to kill her, but Shail saved her.”

“We have to go back for his body.”

Jack paused and he bit his lip. “There’s no body…”

It was that simple, really, that’s what it took for the beast to grab hold of everything in Alsan: four words and a truth as heavy as the destruction of a world.

* * *

 

 _I’ll kill you. First Jack, and then you. You know I’m right, Victoria_.

Victoria couldn’t sleep. She heard Alsan growling in the basement, two floors below, and Jack tossing and turning in the next room, either in the same position as her or barely sleep. And she had this…emptiness inside her, like they’d just stolen one of her organs and left the gaping hole open. The hole got bigger just by breathing; perhaps it had been a lung that had left her forever.

Whatever it was, Victoria knew it was something that was supposed to keep her alive, and that she would now have to learn to live without.

 _I’ll kill Jack_ , she heard Alsan’s horse voice in her mind again and again, whispering words out of a nightmare into her reality.

She couldn’t sleep, her body tense at the thought that Alsan would bust down the door and stay true to his word. She couldn’t help but think that everything was over, and that they couldn’t help Alsan.

Victoria sat on the mattress and closed her eyes, breathing slowly. Her fingers found Ayshel’s Staff and tightened around it. Shail had lost his life to keep it away from the enemy, and Alsan had lost himself.

 _I’ll tear him open before your eyes, you know I will_.

She let it go, and stood up. She knew what she had to do. 

* * *

 

The Soul was receptive, drinking off her energy like it was the first time. The beast wasn’t quiet, but Alsan didn’t care. He felt the pain in waves, crushing harder and harder against the shores of his spirit, but right now he needed some of himself back, a tiny portion of rationality so he could leave the kids, keep them safe… do what Shail had done.

“You’re doing the right thing, Victoria,” he growled at her. His eyes were a yellowy color, and grief and pain were getting the better of him. “Please…” he begged her, but he already had her there, ready, and he needn’t have.

The girl gulped, scared to the marrow of her bones, and reached out a trembling hand for his claw to touch. She wanted to be afraid for herself, but all her heart was shouting at her was to free the beast—her friend fighting against it inside—and save Jack.

“Where will you go, Alsan?” she muttered barely above an audible tone, but he heard.

The wolf pierced his soul once more with astounding strength, and Alsan repressed a scream. He didn’t answer Victoria; he felt the Soul engulfing him in an embrace that reminded him too much of Shail, and he said the words to her instead. _France_ … _where he would’ve gone if he could’ve travelled, where he would’ve taken me—take me far, Soul. Don’t let me hurt them…_

The last thing his brain touched before his eyes closed and his body was teleported away from the pain, however momentarily, was the wizard’s face. Alsan would never see him again, but he’d see the Earth he had so loved, he’d—

Alsan vanished from Limbhad’s Library as quickly as he’d once gotten there, more than three years ago. The Soul had let Earth swallow him whole. The night was quiet again.

 

It was night in Westchester as well, yet not quite—a hybrid of twilight and moonlight swirling behind trees and small mountains and the distant, almost imperceptible skyline of the city.

May was sitting under the night’s roof, on the stairs of her porch. Her moms were inside, making the kind of noise happy, absorbed couples did around dinner and a cheesy TV movie. But she was outside, waiting. She never paid any mind to the world around her except when it was offering her some kind of escape from it, which she usually wasn’t offered. She rummaged for escape.

May was hiding in her own head, ignoring the obvious signs of foreign tragedy that her body felt across the universe, pulsing through her, when she saw her emerge from a ball of light.

At first, she thought it was Shail, and she sat straight, expectant. But soon May could distinguish the silhouette of young Victoria walking towards her house, Ayshel’s Staff in her hand, and May knew.

May knew, and yet she let Victoria approach her, serene and distant like the full moon reigning over the mortals, and say the words to her.

The girl felt as if she was inhabiting the abyss, and only short portions of her thoughts could get out. She wanted desperately to confide in May, keep talking until the pain of so many losses stopped oppressing her body and mind, she wanted to say ‘he’s dead and Jack’s left and I have no one’, she wanted to reassure herself that May would be there as a surrogate best friend, as a substitute for everything she’d had to consider gone that night, but the only thing that came out was: “He’s dead.”

And May just nodded, thankful to Victoria for having brought the news, but feeling something in her go out like a small flame in the wind, like New York’s neon lights at dawn. Realization hit her like a maze over and over, breath after breath, and she felt she’d never live again when Victoria opened her mouth again and told her the rest of the it—the basics of it. Keeping the rawness of it inside, the same as she was doing.

Shail was dead. Jack was gone. Alsan had left them. Victoria was fading away, torn apart by secrets she wished she’d never acquired. And May was alone in her world, in her own home, the last piece of her—smallest of all— flying away with Victoria as she gently called the Soul to take her far away across a continent and an ocean, to Madrid.

The last inches of feeble, sick sunlight vanished behind the horizon as the girl disappeared from Westchester, and when May glanced up again, her eyes’ expression dead and flat, the darkness had already fallen on the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing RM somewhere in 2015, and didn’t really get around to finishing it until summer of 2017, but here it is… :D  
> I'd actually planned a sequel, but in the end it got too complicated XD maybe one day

**Author's Note:**

> The Soul is never mentioned to be any particular gender, yet because of its name in the Spanish version, “Alma”, which is a feminine word, I sort of kept using “she/her” in my head and had the characters do the same, even if in narration I use “it”. She’s a genderless entity, though.  
> Also, I had to translate pretty much every world-building piece of information into English, from kennings to nationalities, but there’s no official English translation so it might as well be gibberish hehehe


End file.
